Keith Larsen was a city-boy, and in no physical condition to face the ordeal that lay ahead. But neither had he been in shape to withstand the attempt on his life, by degrees. Howard Jones, in his Crime in a Changing Society, tells us: "The amount of anxiety evoked by crime, especially violent crime, is such that one is tempted to feel that its roots lie deep. We are, of course, bound to be impressed by striking examples of crime in our society... Most psychologists who study crime nowadays look for its causes in mental factors which lie outside the individual's control, and no one did more to encourage this theory than Sigmund Freud... Everything we do, he contended, has a discoverable cause in the shape of a personal conflict or anxiety. Crime too has its origin in our personal emotional lives. And it is by our early family experiences that our personalities have been shaped." Becoming more ill by the day, Keith had no idea what was happening to him. He tried to shake off his constant drowsiness and eventual absent-mindedness as being caused by the grueling schedule to which he tried to adhere. But when the truth was known, it became quite a different kettle of fish...
CHAPTER ONE
Aberdeen, Maryland, at night, presents one of the most sordid stretches of road in the country: blinking caution signals and truck-weighing stations, EAT, MOTEL, BAR & GRILL. For mile after mile, you see living testimony of man's ability to clutter his life with debris, mute and ugly monuments to his appetites: MOTEL, PACKAGE GOODS.
Aberdeen, Maryland.
A hole of a town stuck indiscriminately in the mass of towns between Baltimore and Wilmington, Delaware. It is a town known to floaters, to drifters, to travelers -- to truck drivers.
In the midst of that mess, there is an unpretentiously crummy motel called the Seaway. The owner is apparently indifferent to the fact that Aberdeen is nowhere near the ocean. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, or just plain lack of originality. Either way, we must focus in on the Seaway Motel, on that old trucker's paradise, on Route 40.
In the back of the main office, there is a bar. It is ten o'clock in the evening. A few people sit there, perhaps fifteen or so, but the room is so small that the bartender can afford the illusion of thriving business. The juke box pants out some song, people sit or stand at the short, ripple-topped bar twirling the bottoms of their glasses on the uneven surface. Outside, you can see the neon sign flashing a bare outline of its seductive plea across the gritty window: EAT-DRINK, SLEEP.
There is one appetite the sign fails to mention.
Shack up.
The sign is not permitted to say that.
But most people who enter the Seaway Motel, and the others like it, enter for that very thing. Legal or not, it simply is unnecessary to advertise in Aberdeen, Maryland, town of quickie marriages and frantic, one-night honeymoons.
Now the focus must shift in one man.
The man stands at the bar, and if you study him closely, you will see that he is nervous. He tried to drink his drink slowly, but he seems unable to take his time. He drinks one drink, orders another, and drinks that too. He looks around -- furtively. He turns back to the bar and stares at the careless array of bottles against the far wall, while others pay not one jot of attention to the man. And this is strange, because the man is not an ordinary-looking member of the species. He has long, slightly unkempt, coppery-brown hair, and a beard to match. But the beard is symmetrical and well trimmed -- you can't tell precisely how old the man is. Somehow, you sense he is young, but you can't be entirely certain. He is tall, slim and well built. You try to visualize him without the beard and longish hair. You can't. His picture remains true to the one in front of you, no matter how you exercise your imagination.
Which is just fine with Keith Larson.
Keith Larson. He's the man we must follow, keep an eye on. Because as unusual as he may be in appearance, his circumstances are even more out of the ordinary. For the present, follow him, see what is about to happen. Later, his paths will take him back. Farther and farther back, until -- you'll see how it is.
* * *
It was another crummy hotel. The bar air burned his eyes and insulted his nostrils, and it was no different from the ones he'd already been in, all the way from New York to Aberdeen. Well, not quite: he'd only been in one other, outside of Camden, New Jersey. He was heading south and now would be heading west.
As straight as possible, because Keith Larson was hardly in a position where he could name his mode of travel. Keith was on the run: as they used to say in corny comic books, on the lam. But that phrase oversimplifies the matter. Keith was running for his life.
He had been out of New York for a day and a half now, and a half-hour ago, had heard the news of his wife's death on the car radio. They had his license number and car-make broadcast. For that reason, he had dumped the car on a used-car shark along the road for an outrageous unfair price. But now he was free of the thing. By tomorrow afternoon, possibly some bright individual would spot the car and the Maryland State Police would begin combing the area for him. But he'd be long gone. He'd be in West Virginia tomorrow, and then Kentucky, then Missouri and so on, westward. He didn't know where he was going. The ultimate goal wasn't important, as far as geography went -- just staying alive was.
His initial impulse was to run. He wanted to tear out of the Seaway bar and hit the road, a shadow in the night with his thumb out. But reason told him to stay right where he was. How could they trace him to this town, this bar, at such an early stage? Impossible. No, he would spend the night there, and by early morning, be on his way. He'd go down to the depot and hop a bus to Louisville. He'd see what was what, and keep moving. Every now and then he would have to find a way to earn some money. The fifteen hundred in his wallet wouldn't last forever, especially if he kept shelling out for motel accommodations. He ordered another drink.
Keith hadn't noticed the four or five women sitting and standing at the bar. Sex was the last thing on his mind -- sex was something that had gotten him into the jam he was now in; at least partially. What Keith wanted most was one more drink to calm his nerves, then blessed solitude in his room, with the dark surrounding him.
It was not to be.
Halfway through the drink, someone tapped him on the shoulder; it was a gentle tap, but even so, he wheeled around quickly, his eyes wide with terror. Cool down, you son of a bitch, he told himself through gritted teeth.
No reason to be alarmed.
The deliverer of the tap was a woman. He looked at her without any real interest.
"You look lonesome," she said. The smile was calculated, all part of a formula -- devoid of anything like comfort except to the loneliest, who will snatch at anything resembling companionship. Keith wasn't particularly lonely, nor was he the least bit interested in mass-produced sex.
"I'm not," he said curtly. He turned away and studied his drink with paranoiac interest. But the woman persisted, perhaps because of his unusual appearance.
"People come here looking for one thing, Mister, and I'm it. I'm reasonable, too." The woman stood next to him now, with her thigh deliberately pressed against Keith's. It was warm; he couldn't escape the sensation of woman's flesh next to his.
He turned to look at her. What he saw was a well-built hooker. A little beat around the eyes, a little haggard in the face -- but who saw the face in a dark room? Her body was intact. There was no padding in her bra, and her limbs were appealing. She was young in flesh, old in the face.
"I'm looking for peace and quiet," he said angrily, and quickly clamped his mouth shut. That's right, he told himself nastily, attract lots of attention. Why in hell don't you start a brawl and really let people know you're in town?
"I'm broke," he said quietly and evenly. "I like you, you're a nice-looking girl, but I'm dead broke." That'll make her beat it, he thought.
"You're not a trucker. And you're not a salesman. That puts you out of the usual league. You interest me, mister."
"I'm nobody," he said, "just another man, and we all know you hate men with a purple passion, right?" His lips curled into a slight sneer.
The woman laughed.
"Sounds like you hate women, too!" She pressed her thigh tightly against him as if to ask Do you hate that? "Look--" she seemed to hesitate, "Are you checked in here?"
"Yeah." Why lie, he thought.
"Let me stay with you."
"You'll go broke," he said, and for the first time, uttered a hollow laugh.
"Not a chance!" she laughed. "Tomorrow's Saturday, and I'll make up for it. Now, can you at least buy me a drink before we turn in?"
"Sure."
He ordered a Manhattan for her.
"What's your name?" she asked. "As long as we're going to be knowing each other -- " this accompanied by a gentle touch of the hand on his leg. In spite of his preoccupations, Keith felt the impact of that touch. It held a great deal of promise.
"Keith," he said.
"Sally," she said. "No last name."
"Same here."
"Another one?" he asked. "No, let's go."
They left, and she followed him toward the highway, where his room was located -- on the front, noisy strip, facing the truck-cluttered road.
His room was typical of the type. Sparsely furnished, used-looking, a Bible on the night table, a battered TV sitting on the dresser, faded bedspread, a sign listing a host of Do's and Don'ts. Keith was mindless of the woman who said her name was Sally, and began to undress. He ached, and his muscles and nerves felt knotted from the unremitting tension he'd sustained during the past thirty-six hours.
"I'm taking a shower," he said.
"Go ahead, Keith. I'll make myself right at home." He left her and went into the tiny bathroom to squeeze his tall body into the shower stall built for midgets. Soon, the needle-like, warm spray beat down into his skin, onto his back and neck, and he tried to make himself go limp and relax. It didn't work. The muscles remained knotted, and he kept thinking about that horrible scene he'd left thirty-six hours ago on the tenth-floor apartment that had up to then been his. Don't think about it, he told himself. Don't think about anything at all, except tonight, and Sally's warm body, and maybe tomorrow's breakfast. But don't think beyond it or past it, in either direction.
When he dried himself off, Keith switched off the bathroom light and went into the bedroom.
Sally had made herself right at home.
He saw her lying on the bed, naked, looking calmly at him. Without clothes, she presented a more interesting picture. Her breasts were ample and firm, and for a much-used woman, she was highly desirable, he decided. Her flesh was white -- too white. In another year or so, it would have that pallid, indoor look that he detested. But for now, she was all right in the complexion department; and she'd let her brown hair down so that it framed her face. All the curves were there: the sensuous curve of lips, the upward sling of breasts, the gentle swell of hips and thighs and buttocks.
But he wasn't interested.
He didn't want to look at a woman.
She moved over when he climbed into bed, and when he rolled over, his back to her, she didn't say anything except, "Tired?"
"Yeah, beat." Then he closed his eyes and tried to make her go away, out of his mind, beyond his awareness.
It was dark and quiet, except for the sounds of their breathing; his labored, hers even and calm. He felt her touch his shoulder, but made no move to acknowledge the touch. Her fingers pressed into his skin, and began a massaging movement.
"You're bugged on women," she said, as though to herself. "But please, don't take it out on Sally." Her fingers continued their massaging, and slowly moved down his back to the base of his spine. With feather-touches, they moved around the side, to his waist.
The fingers were joined by palms, and now he felt whole hands, woman's hands, caressing his aching, tense flesh.
He was tired, determined to resist the onslaught of her seductive touches: but it was increasingly difficult to fight. He was too tired to fight. It would be easier to give in, and besides, if he rejected her, she could get angry and make things difficult -- perhaps fatal.
He turned to face her. Their lips met.
Her mouth tasted like lipstick and liquor, and as their lips touched, she whispered, "You're not that tired, are you Keith, honey?" Keith didn't bother with a reply, but put his arms around her naked waist and gathered her in closer. Her hipbones and slightly rounded belly ground into him, and she made soft, moaning sounds through her lips as they rubbed voluptuously against his.
Her warmth was contained, bottled and vacuum-sealed under the covers. Keith let himself relax. His lips wandered toward her breasts, and when he let them touch a nipple, it swelled and filled. He was surprised that a tired, indifferent pro like Sally could elicit such a response.
"You're getting me excited," she whispered huskily. "Uh huh."
"Don't talk."
His lips descended to the other waiting nipple, while his hands wandered over her soft-firm body. One hand crept between her thighs -- they parted like a rose blossoming after a warm, summer rain; and she was warm with promise. She stirred, and moaned through her teeth. Her hands reached out for him, below the covers, and found him.
"Do you like it when I touch you -- like that?" she asked softly, and as though to emphasize her point, she repeated the caress.
He made a hissing sound.
Her hands crept beneath the covers, and again repeated the caress, this time against bare, seething flesh. His body quivered, and his hands tightened on her. She smiled to herself in the darkness.
It ceased being a pleasant, little diversionary game when Keith clutched her and pulled her close -- when his teeth sank into the tender flesh between neck and shoulders, moved wildly over the rest of her body, down to her breasts, her belly, her trembling, kicking thighs. Everywhere, the hot lips and sharp teeth, bombarding her nerves with painful pleasurable sensations. His hands pawed at her, and she moved hotly against him, trying to get close enough, trying to become a part of his heated, savagely propelled body.
"That's right, love me hard!" she panted through swollen, love-bitten lips, "love me hard!" The biting thrilled her; here was a man out to do some loving, not to be loved or having things (perverted things) done to him for a lousy price. He was loving hell out of her, determined to get a rise from her. She wasn't aware of his desperation, his blind desire to lose himself, even if only for a few hectic moments.
He loved her hard. Very hard.
Her flesh stung and swelled with bites, and recoiled from hard-digging fingers. In turn, she bit back, caressed him in secret places, and the room became filled with their moanings and pan tings. The smell of her, musky and warm and animal-like, rose into his nostrils, and he wanted her very badly.
They rolled across the mattress.
Entwined in a garden of limbs, driving to steam-engine rhythms of their hungry bodies, they rolled and bit and kissed and panted, until Keith felt himself pleasantly trapped by strong thighs and arms. She lay beneath him, moving her belly up and down slowly, enticingly -- "Now," she said. Her voice was tight with desire.
He lowered himself slowly, gently. His hard, tight stomach connected with her more yielding stomach. Her thighs tightened around him.
"Now," she sobbed, and suddenly, they meshed; he went screaming to the hungry core of her, was consumed by her, driven to her deeper by predatory thighs around the small of his back and insistent hands pressing into his buttocks.
They struck up a tempo.
A tempo as old as man, old as time -- a tempo that everyone has beating inside of him. He buried his lips against hers, and they kissed until their jaws slackened and their tongues flickered wildly against each other's. Her grip relaxed, and her hands fluttered deliriously over him, her thighs fell apart. He gripped them and slammed himself against her.
"Ooohyes!" she wailed, and with unremitting force, he drove and pummeled, and their moanings struck up a strange harmony as they stiffened for just a brief second, before they went catapulting into a sea of tingling, tickling pleasures.
Their perspiration mingled; her nipples buried themselves into his chest, tickled pleasantly by the hairs -- and she choked with pleasure, his pleasure, as he gasped under the impact of the sweet captivity that her warm flesh offered.
* * *
Then, when he wakened, she was gone. It was as he had hoped. No explanations, no stories. Gone. Keith rubbed his eyes, an habitual gesture that was quite unnecessary this morning. He was wide awake, and he became increasingly restless as the reality of the new life closed in on him. He couldn't afford to lie here!
Damn, he had to get moving. In a hurry. He sprang out of bed, showered, dressed, and walked down Route 40 without bothering to check the joint over for a restaurant. He would find a place for coffee and toast, then check the bus terminal. First, he had to listen to a radio, read a newspaper.
He had to see how close they were.
He walked for something like a quarter of a mile before he found a restaurant and walked inside.
"Coffee," he said.
"Coffee," the guy echoed, slamming a cup of steaming liquid in front of him. Keith spotted a morning paper lying next to him.
"Anybody reading that?" he asked.
"Nah, help yourself." Keith pretended to scan the headlines, which were about the war, then turned to the inside pages. There was his picture: bearded, longhaired -- the wild-eyed, crack-brained artist -- and a picture of his lovely, innocent wife, Marge. MAN MURDERS WIFE BRUTALLY, FLEES.
* * *
Quick background: Keith Larson, free-lance artist from New York, goes berserk and kills perfectly lovely, irreproachable Margie, Miss Innocence of 1966. Sure, it was to be expected, he thought cynically. The press had to arouse a little public indignation. If they only knew!
"He'll get caught," the guy said, and Keith looked up. Hell, the beard! The hair! How could he be mistaken? How could the guy miss identifying him? He wanted to claw out the hair on his face, his head, and turn away -- but he forced himself to stare blandly at the guy.
"Think so?"
"Sure. You can't get away with that any more. Some" times I wish you could -- my old lady!" The guy laughed a conspiratorial laugh, and while Keith thought, Yeah, isn't that a riot, it's killing me, he laughed too. Forced, of course.
He paid for the coffee and left.
At the only barber shop in town, he got his beard shaved off, and a brush cut.
"Say, you look like a different man!" the barber beamed. "You looked sort of nice in that beard, though."
"It was getting uncomfortable."
He left, astounded by the attention a beard could attract. He'd had it for so long that it hadn't readily occurred to him. But he should have guessed -- Sally's attraction, the barber's comment. Sure. Now he looked like Joe Anybody from Anywhere. He had a chance.
If he got the hell out of Aberdeen, where he'd sold his car, frequented a bar, slept with a hooker, eaten breakfast and gotten a haircut and a shave.
CHAPTER TWO
Keight (just to show what fate can do) had never given much thought to Aberdeen, Maryland. He had never entertained any great desire to head west. New York struck him as the place to pick up on anything or anyone worth picking up on. It was where it was happening, he used to argue with friends. And with this criterion tucked safely in his mind, he had gone his more or less merry way, drinking and whoring and partying and painting.
Keith hadn't always lived in the lap of luxury. But he'd always had enough money to get by on and unlike other fools he knew, was willing to "do a commercial" if it paid him enough money to give him time to devote himself to a serious project. After a while, he had more commercial jobs than he could handle, and just after he met Marge Renaud, he was astounded to find that he'd made over twelve thousand dollars that year. Well, hell -- That wasn't bad for a kid who'd never gone to art school, now, was it? Clearly, he had talent, and could convert it into a comfortable living. This sudden recognition of his economic worth in the marketplace changed his entire outlook on everything else.
Especially a gal named Marge Renaud. Marge was not a Village type, but hung around in the evenings and weekends. She lived in the Bronx, on Creston Avenue, which for all practical purposes, was the other side of the universe. It was a neighborhood 'made up of old, surly, thoroughly unpleasant people, hopeless provincials. It was possibly the only place in New York where people laughed and snickered at you for wearing Bermuda shorts on the street -- a slight throwback to distant Old Countries and perhaps even the Mayflower gang. You couldn't see any stocks or dunking buckets, but it wasn't difficult to sense their presence -- somewhere, hidden.
For these reasons and others, Marge Renaud would take the train down to the Village, in Manhattan, on the other side of the world, the side she felt she belonged on. But unfortunately, she couldn't find a place in the Village within her budget. She worked as a secretary in a chemical plant located in Brooklyn, so in the course of a day, she managed to set foot in three boroughs.
Each borough represented a major portion of her life: work, eat and sleep, and play. Keith had seen her around.
He lived in a fairly decent pad on Twelfth Street, a combination studio and apartment. He never had to leave it, except when he wanted to. The building was a world unto itself; crammed generously with Lesbians and faggots and divorcees and junkies and artists and a few disappointingly ordinary people, as well. He knew them all. But out on the street, he had seen a wild-looking chick with burnished red hair and a lithe, curved, thoroughly feminine figure. When she walked, she wiggled; when she wiggled, she made you think of one thing.
He'd seen her around.
With arbitrary male desire, he decided to meet her. She stood out from the others -- besides being a knockout, she had class. She wasn't a walking, breathing archetype of the Village Broad. She was even well groomed! He'd be willing to bet that in close quarters, she smelled good: bathed and cologned, the whole bit. He hungered for her, that rare specimen not to be found in Greenwich Village.
He saw her walking down Twelfth Street one night, artists, musicians and writers hung out in the evenings, to drink beer and talk shop, even read manuscripts aloud and show canvases. It was not the old coffeehouse crapola. And how this girl managed to worm her way in there was a mystery to Keith, unless she was Talent.
He rushed out of his apartment and ran down the three flights of stairs; out onto the street. She was just disappearing into the bar. He hurried down the street, and when he was near the door, he remembered that he hadn't brought any of his work with him. No matter. The one thing he had was still in rough form -- everything else was a commercial. Walk in there with one of those, and you'd be laughed out, or worse. Tossed out.
Inside, she sat by herself at a corner table and sipped -- why yes, Godalmighty, ale! A broad drinking ale. Something appealed to him. She was maybe tough, and feminine at the same time.
Only one way to score.
Hit her broadside, or head-on.
He sat down at her table and watched her drinking the ale. A waitress came by.
"Hi, Keith. Whereya been?"
"Working, Agnes, always working. Bring me what the young lady's drinking, huh?"
"But -- "
"I've changed my ways, Agnes," he grinned. "Dig?"
"Yeah. I think so." Agnes rushed off to bring him the ale, and he looked at the broad silently.
"I've seen you around," he said, "and I thought it was about time we met."
She smiled wanly.
Not coyly. Wanly.
"So we've met. Your name's Keith. Keith what?"
"Keith Larson."
"And you have a beard -- therefore, you are an artist of sorts."
"You're astounding."
"I'm glad you're impressed. Now I suppose you want to know my name."
"A logical progression, don't you think?"
"Logical, but not necessarily desirable. Suppose I said it was Sarah Lee Somethingorother?"
"It obviously isn't. And I didn't come here to play cute games -- I came here to meet you, because you attracted me."
"You'd like to go to bed with me," she laughed.
"Well, of course. But I won't slash my wrists if I don't. I'd just like to talk to you intelligently -- and, like, why should I be explaining my position? Here I am, Keith Larson, well-known figure in these-here parts.
You're on my turf, doll."
"Would you believe Marge Renaud?"
Keith looked steadily into her eyes.
"It's a nice name. It fits," he told her.
"Your instinct is phenomenal."
There was still that smug, snotty tone that he didn't dig. A defensive, frightened sound -- she was scared, he decided, uneasy. Instead of this damned bantering tack, he ought to be more gentle, more civil -- drop out of the role and just be himself, whatever that was.
He leaned slightly forward.
Agnes dropped an A-bomb; no, it was just the ale, but it hit the table with a loud thud.
"Look, Marge, I think I'm a nice guy. I'd like to break through that stone wall of yours and have the chance to prove it. Is that asking a great deal?"
She read his face.
He had reacted in the right way, all the way down the line, she thought. He hadn't come back at her surly, hadn't walked away in a huff.
He laughed nervously.
"Hell, I'll even buy your next ale. How about that?" Then he grinned. She grinned back, and they laughed easily, their bodies slumped into relaxation.
"Okay, Keith."
"Thank you, Marge. It's a real effort for me to be cute and coy. I'm too tired for it."
"Do you have a job, Keith?"
"I'm a free-lance artist." He saw her face go into that expression (Oh, on welfare) and he held his hand up defensively. "I make money at it. Not a fortune, but a low five figures per."
"You must do commercials." She knew the jargon.
"Yep."
They had a few more bottles of ale. "Want to go for a walk?" he asked. "I'd ask you up to my apartment to look at my work, but I have no etchings, and I wouldn't want to ruin a good cliche So let's just go for a walk and see the fuzzy night life."
"That'll be fine. It's getting a bit fuzzy in here -- maybe it's the ale."
Keith left money on the table and held the door for Marge as she walked out. He was entranced by her body, showing subtly, suggestively through the simple dress that clung to obviously ripe, firm flesh. Her buttocks came through like two symmetrically formed nipples, over-sized, firmed by the juices of life: long overdue for picking and plucking!
Her hips swelled gently and abundantly, and her thighs surged against the dress as she walked slightly in front of him. And inside Antonio's, he'd noticed the breasts. They too were perfect twins, seemingly thrust outward in an attitude of mute, smoky-eyed offering -- but he'd promised to behave, to keep it strictly nonsexual. Okay. It'd be difficult with a girl like Marge, but he wasn't about to blow a possible future with a silly abrupt move.
He took her down back streets, and through alleys. "I never knew these places existed," she said, obviously interested. Couples, in all varieties, leaned against walls and sat on stoops in various stages of love-making -- some of them blatantly advanced.
"Free society around here," Keith said, "but dig the charm of the place. This is the real part of the Village."
"It is charming." He took her toward West Fourth Street, near the Square. She walked close to him. Every now and then, their hips touched, then they moved away from one another. He was not so much aware of the contact itself as of her awareness of it. And she was that. It was comforting to know that the girl was vulnerable, he thought.
Couples sat on benches, embracing. The honking of horns and glare of headlights seemed remote, ineffectual. Every now and then a dipped light illumined a couple, their limbs locked together across the slatted surface of a bench -- male legs, female legs. An audible sigh, a moan emitted from a dry, hot throat.
"Do they do anything else around here?" Marge asked.
"Not at night. If they aren't during, they're looking -- like those people." He thrust his head in a general direction, and she followed it. There were people, males and females, looking for mates: tough-looking butches, dewy-eyed, soft-lipped queens, straight males, an occasional hooker.
"It's a lonesome world," Keith said, "and these people, most of them, gave up looking for the real thing. Now they just look for substitutes. There isn't much fakery around here. They can't afford the niceties."
"Sounds grim."
He stopped walking and faced her, standing there in the middle of the sidewalk.
"It damned well is," he asserted. He walked, she followed. Her hand slipped into his.
It was small and warm, and it snuggled inside his big hand for security. He held it and squeezed it, but didn't quite know how to handle it. They continued walking, and everywhere, people made love, looked for love, found love as they left the benches with frantic looks in their eyes.
They walked in silence for a long, taut time, hand in hand. Their footsteps rang and scuffled on the pavement.
Finally. "Do yon want to show me some of your work, Keith?"
Without stopping, hesitating, or changing the drawl of his voice, he answered, "if you really want to see it. I only have one good thing, still in rough -- "
"Very much," Marge interrupted.
"Okay. I only live down the street from Antonio's. You walked right past my building."
They walked back faster -- much faster, purpose and goal in their stride, but neither commented on it. There was a spell closing down on them that neither wished to break by mentioning its existence.
Then they were there.
"It's really very nice," Margo said as she looked around. She was standing in the doorway of the studio. Paintings, all of them portraits, stood on easels in various stages of progress. It was easy to see that Keith was a good artist, and that people knew it. He was busy. "And I can see you're busy," she said, voicing her thoughts.
"Too busy -- with all this," he said with a hand-wave. "I'd figured I'd do enough of that stuff to carry me through, you know? But it snowballed and now I haven't time to do the things I really want to do."
"Where's that one thing?" she asked. "Oh. Yeah. Here." He walked over to a canvas, the only one covered with a dropcloth. Gently, he lifted the cloth away and there it was: partly colored, mostly sketched in with pencil, a picture. What kind of picture, Marge found difficult to judge. She knew next to nothing about painting, and this was rough, as Keith had admitted. She looked at it intently, and gradually saw the shape, of a gigantic axe, raised in the hazed sky, propped in an attitude of near-falling -- and below, on the ground, was life. People, cars, houses, all looking very unaware and nondescript. Even in roughened form, the figures and attitudes were there, if you just looked very closely.
"Awesome," was all she could say.
"I've got the shapes and attitudes pretty well fixed," he said. "Color is the thing that's driving me buggy -- you can see that the figures are just plain impressionistic now, but if I get the color right, it'll be more surrealistic-- more grotesque. Sort of like a Kafka nightmare. That's the quality I want, because that's the way life is, in this instance."
"Do you really feel that way, Keith?" Marge asked seriously.
"I learned to get over the fairy tales and sentimentalities," he answered. "I have a mother in the State Hospital because she couldn't chuck it after my father died. She just clung insistently to that rosy little picture of their life as it was -- couldn't come into contact with the here and now. And, there've been other things. But they aren't important -- the thing itself is right there on that canvas, and I have to do it just as I see it. I puff up enough egos with my commercials."
He turned from the painting, and picked up the cloth. She saw him lower it carefully on the painting. Inwardly, she shuddered. Keith was a very intense person -- and didn't take life at face value. He looked deeply into it, below the shiny surfaces that people painted with their cheap conversation and dances.
She was impressed.
Impressed by that, and by the. fact that Keith did all right economically as well. He managed to cover both sides of the waterfront.
"Feel like a drink, or some coffee?" he asked her.
They were in the living room now, which was tastefully, simply furnished. Clean. Well kept. He seemed like an incongruity, standing there, possessor of all this --with his beard and his long, carelessly combed hair. But then too, he seemed to fit. A paradox, she thought.
"Coffee, if you don't mind -- let me make it," she said.
"I'll make it," he said. "I do it all the time."
"But you don't always have a woman in the house. So let me. Just show me where things are."
"How do you know?" he asked with a grin. His teeth were even and chalk-white. "Know what?"
"That I don't always have a woman around."
"I've checked." Marge grinned too, and they went into the kitchen, also astoundingly neat except for the few dishes in the sink. It wasn't at all her conception of the Village. He showed her where the coffee was, the cups, the saucers, the sugar and milk -- everything. He watched her putter around, her body a study of economically graceful movements. As a painter and student of anatomy, he appreciated this more than the average male would have.
"You know, Marge, someday I'd like you to model for me, if you're not overly modest. Nude work."
"I thought only sculptors used nudes."
"Sometimes I use models. You'd be great with a little instruction."
"What kind of instruction?" Her eyebrows arched demonically upward. He studied the expression intently, and liked it.
They sat in the living room, drinking coffee.
"You have an expressive face, too," he said. "You'd be as good without clothes -- for a model."
"Someday when you're rich and successful, you can retain me," she said, "as a model." This last was said in the same add-on fashion as Keith had used.
"That'll be a long time."
"In the meantime, I'll stay with my lousy job."
"What is your lousy job?" he asked.
Marge told him. He shuddered visibly. A beautiful girl like her was wasted in some colorless company doing drab, colorless work. She was meant for color and vitality, the mainstream of heady, zesty living. It's a shame I can't do something for her, he thought.
After they had coffee, they talked. Unwittingly, they became enmeshed in one another, involved with each other's dreams and thoughts and wishes. By the time Keith walked her to the subway, he felt as though he'd known her for a long, long time.
He stood in the tunnel with her, waiting for her train.
"We'll see each other again, I hope," he said.
She stood very close to him. Now, her lips were close to his face. She wants me to kiss her, he thought. She won't be mad if I kiss her -- and their lips met, cautiously at first, but then more firmly, until he tasted her lipstick and felt the firm-soft flesh rub eagerly against his.
It was a long kiss.
A kiss heavy with promise, filled with budding passion.
"Does that answer the question?" she asked with a soft smile.
"Yes. I'm glad we met, Marge."
Then the train came squealing and grating down the track, much too damned soon. The overhead lights faded from the sudden surge of electricity, and he watched the door slide open. She walked in and sat down, the door closed, and the train lurched into motion, gradually picking up speed. It shot away from him, out of his sight, headed around a bend, irrevocably on its way uptown, west, toward the Bronx, where she lived.
He emerged from the tunnel and looked at a clock inside a drug store. One-thirty a.m. The night was young for most people; these people who slept all day and balled all night. But Keith seldom did -- he usually got a decent night's sleep. And the next day, three people would be coming to the studio for sittings. He had to be on the ball.
Yet, he wasn't tired.
His head was too full of Marge. His senses still recoiled from the sight of her, the sound of her, the smell of her -- the taste of her. So much woman there, he thought excitedly. When would they see each other again? It was like a high school date, where you were polite and gentlemanly, only because you were afraid to make an assertive move. It turned out that she'd had to make the move, down there in the tunnel. It wasn't like him.
He went to Antonio's, had three beers by himself and went home. He tried to read. The words didn't register. He turned off the light and listened to the muted traffic noises outside. He felt the empty space beside him, wishing that it were filled, occupied by Marge Renaud's warm, sumptuous body, nestled next to his, surging against him, begging and whining and jockeying for his caresses and kisses -- He went to sleep dreaming of Marge.
Marge filled him with desire. He had to see her soon; very soon. And it would have to go beyond a good night kiss. His aching loins demanded it.
CHAPTER THREE
The bus station was typical of a small, rundown town: exactly three people sat morosely on benches, each with a cheap piece of luggage at his feet. They were remote from one another, lost in different worlds of thought. Keith bought a ticket to Louisville, and was told that the bus would be here in two hours. Two hours!
Two hours at a bus terminal! His mind made rapid, frantically propelled calculations: if they found the car on the lot and traced him to the motel, the barbershop -- it would be a matter of minutes before they were right here, at the bus terminal. Without a car, how else would a wanted man get out of town? Not by hitchhiking, not in broad daylight. Either the train or the bus -- period. Every nerve in him wanted to move, run, do something, anything but he forced himself to read the rest of the morning paper and stay riveted to the hard, wooden bench. If they just didn't go to the barber for a while, they wouldn't recognize him now, without the beard and long hair. But once the barber said, "Hey, I got a guy this mornin' with a beard an' long hair -- " it'd be all over. They'd know what to look for, and he couldn't think far enough at this moment to decide what to do with his physical appearance. Eventually, maybe some plastic surgery -- a dye job, a deep suntan. There were ways. But those ways weren't to be had in Aberdeen, Maryland, which to Keith, was frighteningly close to New York City.
A policeman came strolling into the terminal: a local cop, not a fed or a Trooper. He laughed uproariously at something the ticket clerk said, then ambled over to the paperback and magazine rack, gave the thing a quick, familiar turn, and walked out of the terminal. Keith kept his face buried in the paper, puffing nervously on a cigarette.
When the cop had left, Keith lowered the paper. It couldn't go on like this, he told himself. He had to find a spot, the spot where no one would think of looking for him.
Otherwise, he'd crack up.
For some insane reason, the bus was twenty minutes early, and he boarded it with visible relief. It was almost empty, and with a last-minute instinct, he looked for the seat next to the emergency exit; he found it, and sat on the inside, next to the window that was also an escape hatch. Funny, he thought, how you react; you drop into self-preservation thinking so fast when you have to.
The driver came aboard, closed the door, and started the engine. The bus lumbered into gear, and soon they were on Route 40, going like hell, passing everything on the road. There'd be three and a half hours before the bus made its first rest stop, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. West Virginia. God knows they won't look for me there, he thought amusedly. He leaned back in the seat after reclining it, and closed his eyes. On my way, he thought exultantly, on my way.
He awakened an hour and a half later, and for the first time saw the person sitting next to him. A woman. A young woman, a little tired around the eyes, a little worn in the face, but still young, with a fine body -- "Sally!" he gasped, "what the hell're you doing on this bus?"
"Movin' on down the line, like the old song goes," she said. "I followed you all morning." She dropped her voice. "And I know who you are."
He put his finger to his lips.
"Doesn't bother me," she said laconically -- "nice guy like you, the bitch must've had it coming. So I figured you'd be wanting company. They won't be looking so hard for a couple, you know."
Possibly, she was right.
Possibly.
He wanted to explain things to her, tell her how it was, why it had to happen, but he was afraid to talk, in spite of the fact that all the seats around them were empty.
"I don't even know where I'm going," he told her. "If things get rough, I'll be sleeping in the bushes by day, traveling at night -- hell, you don't want to stay with me."
"Sounds like fun. Haven't been outdoors in years."
"Sally, you're nuts. Suppose I murder you?" he whispered, keeping his voice barely audible. She laughed.
"You're not Jack the Ripper, Keith. You're a nice guy who got boxed in a little too close, a little too tight. I'm not worried." She dropped her hand onto his knee, and moved it up toward his thigh with a caressing motion. He felt his leg muscles stiffen wherever she touched him.
"What kind of town's Clarksburg?" she asked innocently.
"I have no idea," he replied, "I've never been there."
"I wonder how long the stop is?"
"Probably for an hour or so--time enough to eat, anyway."
"Plenty of time," she grinned. Her fingers kneaded his thigh and moved up a bit higher. "Plenty of time."
"Where?" he said sarcastically. "Behind the restaurant, maybe?"
"Why not? I'll take it anywhere I can from you, sweetheart."
Keith forgot all about his trouble, and concentrated on Sally. There was a lot to concentrate on.
The scenery rolled by. They were on Route SO now, in mountain country. Treacherous, hairpin-road country, where the bus slowed down to a laborious five miles per hour to negotiate some of the turns. The driver spoke into the intercom and said it would be like this for the rest of the way into Clarksburg, and not to worry -- he'd made this trip a thousand times and knew every inch of road. Everyone relaxed visibly, including Keith and Sally.
"Kiss me, Keith. I need security." He kissed her lips, which were raised in offering. They were warm and good; no booze taste to them now. Who knows, he decided, maybe a few days outdoors will make a different girl out of Sally. It could conceivably happen. Get all the vice and crud out of her system, and his too. If he made it, that is.
With him, life had boiled down to the big if. Her hands stroked the back of his neck, and she clung to him with suction force created by the joining of their lips. She breathed heavily, until every muscle and nerve in him agreed. Yeah, if we have to make it behind the restaurant, we will -- "Tell me what happened," she said. "Later." Keith looked nervously around. "Later. When we're alone."
"I won't wanna talk then. Now. Nobody can hear with the noise."
Softly, he told her. She listened. He talked and talked and talked, with no pauses, no breaks, no hesitations, and she listened. When he finished, she nodded incredulously.
"God. What a nightmare!"
"Yeah."
"You couldn't explain how it was? Just tell them?" Keith laughed harshly.
"Come on, Sally, this is murder. Hell, you know cops."
"Yeah. I almost forgot," she spat vehemently. "Keep running, baby, just keep running."
The bus pulled into Clarksburg.
"One hour," the driver announced. "We leave in one hour." People scurried off the bus. Keith and Sally left some clothes on the seats to reserve them. More passengers would be boarding here.
"Hungry?" he asked, heading toward the restaurant.
"No. You?"
"No."
"Tell you what -- get some sandwiches and Cokes to go -- for later. I'll meet you over there." He looked to where she pointed: a thick, apparently impenetrable clutter of trees and underbrush. Their eyes met, and she nodded.
"I told you back there, I needed security," she pouted. Keith smiled, and hurried away to get the sandwiches. Inside, he ordered two large Cokes and four tuna clubs to go, and got them with unusual dispatch. The diner wasn't particularly crowded.
Sally waited at the edge of the woods, and saw him coming toward her with a large bag.
"A regular old-time picnic," she laughed, and wormed her way through some underbrush, wriggling her buttocks in a fantastically provocative way. He followed her. The underbrush closed behind them, swallowing them from view.
It was like being protected; framed from the world's view. They sat down on some brown, strong-smelling pine needles, and Sally smiled. She looked at her watch.
"Forty-five minutes. Don't waste any of it," she said.
Keith recognized a certain amount of sense in the plea.
He took her in his arms, and she giggled, "That's right, Keith, now you've got the idea," and he cut her words off with a kiss. He felt glad that Sally had come along: if this weren't the Twentieth Century, it could turn into a veritable Tom Jones-type adventure. Her lips ground against his, and all the old passion that she had stirred up in him on the bus came rushing back. He sought her breasts, and found them. Overhead, the birds chirped, the smell of pine stung his nostrils, and the woman-smell emanating from Sally blended with all of it, making his senses real crazily.
Her blouse unbuttoned easily, and he felt her squirm as her hands reached behind her. Breasts, large young breasts, tumbled out, free and singing healthily. They looked especially alluring to Keith, his artist's perception sharpened and enhanced by the outdoor surroundings. It gave him a vision of the old, pastoral Greek things, where shepherds balled young maidens while flocks grazed unconcernedly in the background. He touched her nipples, and heard a sharp intake of breath whistle through her clenched teeth.
"That's it, baby. Touch me gently --!" And he went on touching bare, white flesh, feeling the flames underneath; a swollen ruby nipple, a patch of white, smooth breast, tender skin near the belly, the navel. She cringed and twitched to his touches. He kept them teasing, suggestive, and she moaned into his shoulder, her hands busy now, busy upon him, touching with that same knowing, eager quality.
"Kiss them," she murmured. Keith bent down and took a nipple between his lips. Sally sighed. His hand went up her skirt, and tugged demandingly at the panties beneath. She lifted her rounded buttocks, and he slid them off.
Smiling, she rose to her knees, and removed her skirt.
"Don't want to mess up the clothes," she explained, and fell upon him, naked and squirming and hot -- and ready.
"Now do things to me baby -- crazy things!" Her voice was a tight, harsh whisper, devoid of humorous banter. It rang deadly serious, filled with hungry desire and wanting.
Her hands were all over him. Touching, probing, struggling beneath clothing, pulling impatiently at buttons and zipper and shoelaces.
"Crazy things," she whispered in his ear, punctuating the whisper with a nip of teeth and hot thrust of moist tongue.
When her naked body touched his, he groaned. Her breasts jammed into his chest with nipples hard and swollen. Her quivering belly muscles and downy passion sought entrance into his flesh, and like two pistons driving in like directions, they pummeled one another with their burning bodies. He kissed her all over.
She cried with pleasure and painfully intense ecstasy. Her lips burned and blazed on her flesh, branding her with their fire. Her hands sought him and found him, as his did the same with her.
The birds sang sweetly overhead.
The pine needles tickled their sensitized bodies.
"Keith," she gasped, "hurt me."
"You're crazy," he groaned, thinking he'd done enough hurting, and wasn't sure of what she wanted, anyway. He went on kissing and fondling her, until she took his hand and guided it to her breast. He cupped it, feeling its nipple scathing his palm. She pressed his hand into it, hard.
"Pinch," she breathed.
Like that?
He pinched, kneaded and squeezed.
"Oooh!" Her hand grasped his other hand and guided it to her other breast, and he squeezed both of them, feeling the taut, feathery-firm substance of them, and straining to impress themselves in his moist palms!
"Knee me," she groaned, and pulled frantically at his leg, got it up into her groin -- and he pressed it against hot, soft flesh, between blood-swollen, flesh-heavy thighs: woman's thighs. "That's it," she hissed. "Oh, hurt me."
And the game continued.
He pressed a flat palm into her stomach, bit her nipples jerkily, and she laughed and cried simultaneously as he loved her savagely and brutally, with his hands and teeth and knees. He barraged her with sensations.
"Lie still," she whispered huskily, and pushed him gently, firmly away from her, until he lay on his back, staring up at the sky.
He closed his eyes.
Only the smells and the sounds, now. Her lips bathed him gently; they were warm and soft, as they trailed slowly down his body, parting light hairs along the way, down to his stomach, where it was hard and flat and concave. The muscles knotted and quivered painfully. Her hands brushed him gently.
"More?" she asked throatily.
"More," he groaned.
Her lips continued their evocative journey; like a moist, hot dart, her tongue shot into his navel, sending a shiver all the way down to his groin.
Farther.
He felt her hair tickle his hips, move down his thighs and his legs, right down to his toes. Then up again! Her hands grasped him, and her lips closed down gently, consuming his hungry ache and comforting it, goading it, stirring it into agonizing bliss.
He gasped.
"Umm," was her reply, and he felt his muscles stiffening all the way up and down his legs and his stomach. And he was going to explode, he thought frantically.
Sally sensed it.
Smiling, she looked at her watch, which she hadn't bothered to remove.
"Ten minutes," she said.
He pushed her laughing onto the ground, and mounted her with his quivering, shivering body. Her arms reached out for him and gathered him in close.
He felt the power of her legs.
Their lips met, and they moaned into each other's gaping mouths as they meshed into the final, ultimate, sought-after embrace -- and he sought her deeply, the very core of her; nothing less would do for either of them, and she moved upward, seeking him, as he pressed downward in the same search.
Good.
"Ah, good -- Oo!" She sighed in heavy breaths, as they moved with a strange, inner syncopation, their mutual need.
Slowly. Very, very slowly.
And something exploded, disintegrated, and their movements gathered speed and force. They rocked frantically, panic-stricken against one another, gathering steam for the grand finale.
And it was grand.
Grand and final.
They quivered and gasped, clutching eagerly for another in feverish, wide-eyed seas of sensation, and the release snapped out of them in great torrents. And then, it was over.
Sally lay back and sighed.
"I'm glad I came along for the ride," she smiled. "So am I," Keith answered, "but it's liable to get rough."
"I can take care of myself. I'm a big girl."
"That you are, girl, that you are." He patted the well-fleshed buttocks to illustrate his point. She giggled, and began gathering clothes.
They made the bus just in time, she running slightly behind Keith, who carried the large bag.
* * *
Lt. John Frick of the 101st Precinct, Detective Bureau, figured Marge Larson had been a corpse for well over twelve hours -- maybe closer to twenty. Everything was amazingly intact. No furniture turned upside down, no blood, no signs of violence, except for a lot of rumpled clothing and those horrible, purple finger marks on her young, tender neck.
A beautiful woman, Marge Larson.
"She was a gorgeous broad," a sergeant said dryly.
"And quite useless unless you're a necrophiliac, sergeant." Frick threw his straw hat onto a chair and mopped his brow. He was a man of forty, young-bodied, lean-jawed: the picture of a busy, cynical cop. He stared down at Marge, who lay beside the unmade bed. He'd gotten her in bed. After a forage through dresser drawers, he knew the score: her husband Keith had packed his duds and taken off. Clothing was disturbed and all the shaving stuff was gone, as was a toothbrush and a hairbrush. And underarm deodorant. Only her things remained in the bathroom.
He turned to the sergeant, who admired (rather than studied) the dead body that belonged to essentially no one.
"Put out an APB on Keith Larson," he said. "There's his picture on the dresser." It was a ten-by-twelve-inch portrait of Keith, bearded, long-haired and smiling. His inscription at the bottom of the picture: "Love to Marge from Keith." Lt. John Frick knew that Keith was long gone, and that he had a brilliant head start. A neighbor had called the precinct earlier, saying that an unusual amount of noise and yelling had been going on in the Larson place, and that Keith had been seen in the corridor with a suitcase. It all added up.
Like a neat, pre-pieced puzzle, every notch fitted right into place for Frick. He'd put together puzzles like this for fifteen years; grim, grotesque puzzles, colored by blood and guts, studded with knives and hatchets and guns -- and bare hands.
But something was strange here.
Something in the room that belied the obviousness of the puzzle.
He looked at ash trays. They were filled with cigar butts. He would have to find out if Keith Larson had been a cigar smoker; he hadn't found any lying around in the apartment.
"I wonder if Marge had another man," he said to no one in particular.
"Who knows?" the sergeant said. "A woman this beautiful, be a shame for one guy to hog all of her, married or not."
"You have a filthy mind, sergeant. Sometimes I wonder if you're morally sound."
"Sorry," he mumbled, and looked away. Frick grinned, and walked through the rest of the rooms, Keith Larson, in his mind, was guilty. Otherwise, he'd have called -- add that to the complaint about the "unusual noise," sounds of arguing. A blowup. A snapping of temper. Boom. Not first-degree stuff: no premeditation here, obviously. But still, murder.
Maybe she'd been playing around on the side, and Larson had caught her at it. A woman as beautiful as Marge Larson had been could evoke blind, unreasoning jealousy in a man.
A plush place. Larson had had a good life here; dough, a nice-looking wife -- Frick shook his head with something amounting to weary sadness. He knew the script by heart.
The lab boys came in, took fingerprints, photographs, everything, and the chief told Frick he'd have a report inside of eight hours. Frick nodded, without looking at the guy. He kept staring at -- what? Something strange.
Three days after their first meeting, Keith and Marge had met again. They went uptown for dinner then to the theater. The evening cost Keith a bundle -- the tickets had to be bought from a scalper, but it was worth it. He had forgotten how pleasant an evening could be in good female company: a fine dinner, a fine play. He walked out of the theater with Marge on his arm, feeling fine. It had just rained, and the air smelled deceptively clean and fresh. For a New Yorker, it was elixir.
"Real good," he sighed, "I haven't spent an evening like that in I don't know how long. Enjoy the play?"
"Yes. It was great. I haven't seen such fine acting in a long time."
They talked about the play and walked slowly downtown, neither of them thinking about bringing their evening to a conclusion. It was Friday night. Marge didn't have work the next day. Time was blissfully unessential.
"Where to now?" Keith asked. Marge shrugged. "Up to you," she said, and they kept walking, by this time hand in hand. Both knew the other was keenly conscious of the touch -- and longed for more, but there was a note of hesitancy, almost shyness, sounding between them.
"Let's hop a cab downtown," Keith suggested, and whistled loudly for a cruising taxi. It stopped. Keith opened the rear door and let Marge slide in ahead of him. The door slammed, and the driver started moving, even before Keith gave him a destination. He gave the driver Antonio's address. "Why Antonio's?" Marge asked. "Because now's when it's happening, dear girl. You always get there too early -- I take it you want to mingle with the talent."
"I certainly do," she said, squeezing his arm, "only with a specific talent."
His heart made a jump. She meant him, of course.
Hell, he thought, why not skip Antonio's and just go to his place? Well, he reasoned silently, it might seem awkward, blatant. It would happen if it were meant to happen -- and he added to himself that he would do everything in his power to make it happen. He wanted to make love to Marge Renaud Antonio's was alive with voices when they walked inside. Everyone was talking at once. Someone saw Keith and motioned to others. They smiled at him and called him over.
Keith introduced Marge around. Most of the people were men, but there were a few women. Marge felt herself the center of attention, and squirmed slightly under it.
"Where you been, all suited and tied?" someone asked Keith.
"To the theater, man."
"Broadway?" someone asked incredulously. "Yes -- good play."
A collective groan went up. "Hell, man, we're losin' you."
Keith laughed, and got a chair for Marge, then one for himself. He ordered two bottles of ale and lit a cigarette, feeling fine now, just fine, with his kind of people, the kind of people he was losing because of his seemingly hopeless commercial entrapment.
"Jay's reading us has latest chapter. Go on, Jay, wail."
Jay read, and Keith and Marge listened, along with the others. Keith was accustomed to being thoroughly bored by the poetry and prose of the crowd; most of it was hopelessly obscure, full of secret meaning, private jokes and allusions. But not Jay. Jay told tales of adventure, man against nature, against his private impulses, and was always exciting. He listened raptly -- Jay was writing a loosely woven novel (as he explained it) about Twentieth Century men dragged by the Twentieth Century scene of progress, who wanted to go back, back as far as possible, to start all over again. When you went into Jay's crummy pad, you saw maps all over the walls. Lewis and Clark maps, La Salle maps, John Smith maps, Lord Baltimore maps -- and books -- original narratives by de Vaca and McKensie and Verendrye. Jay had been a history major at NYU, had been booted out for "distasteful political activities," and had turned to writing. Everyone knew that he knew more about the real history than his former professors and most graduate students. And he wrote about it under the guise of fiction.
When Jay finished, Keith felt breathless. The subject excited him, and he wished he knew enough about it to paint it -- like that bit Jay bad once told him of: Lewis's big dog, Scammon, battling it oat with a grizzly bear in Three Forks, Montana, then nothing more than a chunk of the Louisiana Territory. Exciting stuff. After the reading, Keith introduced Jay to Marge. "Jay Hawkes, meet Marge Renaud, and the other way around."
"Hi, Marge."
"I enjoyed your reading very much. It's exciting. Keith tells me it's part of a novel you're doing."
"Yeah. But it goes slowly -- very slowly. A lot of reading and hunting in old bookstores."
Jay Hawkes was almost as tall as Keith, and built in much the same way, but much darker of skin, higher of cheekbone, and his hair was raven black. It was straight and thick, and his eyes matched his hair in color: jet -- uncompromisingly black.
Jay was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian from the reservation in North Carolina, who had come to NYU to study history, and he was steeped in it. Facts were not important to Jay, but truth was, and as important as truth, spirit. This he explained to Marge over a beer -- Keith had heard it countless times before.
"Maybe it's because I'm an Indian," he explained to Marge, who listened hypnotically, "that I want the spirit of it so desperately -- it's funny. In three centuries of exploration, it was always the same: the first men were entranced by the immensity of it, the beauty of it, the wildness of it -- it made them cringe at the thought of returning to Spain or France or England. Then the second boatload would come, and they were the people who brought their junk with them -- and here you are today."
"How it could have been and how it really is," Marge said slowly.
"Something like that."
It turned out that Jay lived five or six buildings down the street from Keith; but they both worked hard during the day, and saw each other only in the evenings, usually at Antonio's.
"Well, nice meetin' you, Marge. Seeya, Keith. I haveta get goin'."
"Okay, Jay. Keep turning out those chapters, man."
They watched Jay walk toward the door, his wide-shouldered, narrow-waisted and -hipped frame disappearing. He walked arrow-straight, and the long, black hair needed trimming.
"A real Indian," Marge sighed. "Handsome, too."
"Yeah," Keith said, not appreciating her attraction the least bit.
They had another beer and left.
Wordlessly, they walked toward his apartment. Deep down, like a murmur in a deep, fast-flowing stream, they heard and felt the rumblings of anticipation-- tonight, something would happen, but they didn't mention it.
"Coffee?" he asked as soon as they were settled inside.
"All right." Marge got up to make it, but Keith stayed her with an outstretched hand.
"Uh-uh. I'll make it. Sit." He went into the kitchen, and she heard him rustling around with the pot and cups and saucers. It was late now, after two in the morning. "Put some records on the machine," he called from the kitchen.
She saw the albums, lined up in a rack below the record player. There were a lot of them. Most of them were jazz and folky-type stuff, with an occasional smattering of show tunes and classical symphonies. She put on some Ray Charles and Big Bill Broonzy. The music shouted and twanged out of the speakers at her, across and around the room.
Keith came back, holding two cups and saucers.
"Good stuff," he said, and sat down beside her, placing the cups on the table in front of them. They sat close together, drinking coffee and listening to the music. It was too spell-binding to intrude upon with conversation.
They sat quietly, aware of the music and of each other's closeness.
Keith took her hand in his, and she moved close to him; her leg felt warm against his, and he could sense her breathing, in time to the slow, turgid tempo of the blues-shouting. They looked at one another and smiled softly.
Keith bent his head down toward hers, and they kissed. It was a soft, lingering kiss that gathered heat and momentum with each second, until their arms were entwined tightly around one another, and their lips fighting for supremacy, crushing, burning, rubbing -- shouted and honked and moaned in their ears, inside their bodies. Her heartbeat throbbed inside his chest, fired by the heat of her breasts against him. His hands slid up and down her back on a fitful, restless journey.
They separated their lips, but not their embrace, and Keith kissed the soft, smooth skin at the base of her neck. Marge felt the warm, clean breath there, trickling inevitably down her dress, through her loose-woven brassiere, onto naked, tingling breasts. She shuddered.
Keith kissed her there again. She shuddered again.
He heard her shoes fall to the floor as she kicked them off. He kicked off his loafers, took off his tie and unbuttoned his collar, and they melted slowly backward, like wilting plants, embracing, until they lay side by side. The music sped up slightly, but not very much, not enough to obscure the throbbing, desperate beat that drove the voice out of tortured lungs -- and the desperation slipped into their senses, making their embrace more necessary, somehow.
Marge's jaw slackened, and when they next kissed, their tongues collided. His hands were flattened against her buttocks, holding her belly and hip-bones close to him -- and they made unhurried, liquid movements against one another, the warmth burning through layers of clothing.
She felt him against her. Burning, throbbing, huge: him. Desire choked her. Her throat was dry, her heart beat wildly against her breasts, and she wanted him. She liked the feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him. She wasn't over-promiscuous, but nor was she a virgin. In this day and age, why should a girl hold back, she had reasoned.
No reason. No reason at all.
His hands rubbed heatedly against her buttocks, lifting the skirt slowly upward, exposing increasing patches of bare, white thighs. One hand drifted down, onto a single patch. It burned. Their flesh together burned, she realized with excitement, and now that hand was -- yes -- moving up, toward the most burning part of all, and she wanted that hand to hint at more pleasure, fill her with more agonized desire.
Now it was there, rubbing against silky panties, through the thin material, now on her bare back, gathering more and more skirt around her waist, until she felt fingers at the snaps of her brassiere. They lingered there.
"Yes," she moaned, through swollen lips. Thank God it was a loose one, she thought. He unsnapped it with ease, and her breasts lunged forward like live entities breathing a sigh of relief and gratitude for being freed at last. She felt the entirety of them. So did his hands.
She gasped as his fingers stirred her nipples into stiff, full passion. A choking sensation overwhelmed her, and their clothes became unbearable nuisances. With a FUGITIVE LOVER frantic series of shrugs and tugs, she took off her dress, slid the loosened bra off her smooth, bare shoulders, and lay next to him, clad only in warmed panties.
Keith kissed her lips, and slid his hand gently, hesitantly, beneath the waistband; when his fingers made contact, she whimpered, moved to and fro with gyroscopic motions, helpless to do otherwise. And when he slid the last remaining nuisance downward, she shrugged her hips and buttocks eagerly. Naked, now.
Naked, beautiful, on fire with dangerously kindled lust. His hands shaped and molded the curves and bumps and hollows of her body. His lips confirmed the existence of them, kissing. Now her fingers were working at him, at his buttons, his clothes, and it was his turn to shrug and shiver and work them loose from his body while her hands propelled them -- and somehow, in a feverish fog, he became as naked as she, and they lay together, burning and branding one another with their hot bodies. His lips sought her breasts while her hands sought him. Now it was to Big Bill, who seemed to be singing in time to them, shouting encouragement, goading them on. She captured him between her dusky, warm thighs, and grasped him with greedy possession -- her body rocked erotically back and forth, and he felt himself sliding irrevocably to the sweetest trap of all. They meshed, audibly, tactilely. Keith felt a heavy-blooded thigh drop over his hip, and her hands flattened and curled against his back; they moved forward, their lips clinging desperately together as the music played and their bodies screamed with exultation. He cupped her buttocks.
His thumbs rested at the threshold of the deep cleavage that separated perfect spheres, twins, and he slammed her to him: she moaned, bit his lower lip with animal hunger, and they panted into each other's mouths, while their bodies jerked and quivered together.
Together. Completely together.
His nostrils dilated as he smelled the hunger of her, the musky odor of her, and his eardrums pounded inside his brain while the blood surged and flowed through him. He tried to swallow, and couldn't.
"Keith, I love you," she moaned. Their second meeting, he thought, and here it was. Was it real or just the heat of now? Real, he thought, definitely real.
"I love you," he moaned back, and they were silent, lost in the sea of one another's pleasure, passion and heat. Her nipples bit softly into his chest, and he felt her ready for him as he stirred with her, delving single-mindedly toward her core, the center of her very being.
He struck.
Marge felt her arms fly upward, behind her, and her mouth dropped open with incredulous pleasure. She choked with her own gasps, which came up faster than she could anticipate, and her hips flew into an uncontrollable flurry of motion.
Keith felt her nails biting into his buttocks, goading, prodding, driving him fiercely to the mass of pleasure: their mutual, single pleasure.
Something erupted.
It started down deep, that strange force, and began to gather steam and force as it moved upward, like a bubble getting larger and larger, their bodies tightening uncomfortably -- then an explosion, a shattering that made them sob with relief and disbelieving pleasure.
And it was over.
They stared deeply into each other's eyes and smiled.
"Oh, that was wonderful," Marge cried, "so wonderful, darling." Her fingers drifted through his long hair, and he playfully rubbed his beard against her cheek. She giggled, and yanked at it.
When they separated their limbs, he kissed her navel, and she made a threatening "oooh," and he said "Again," questioningly, and she said "I could be persuaded -- " And he felt her caressing him lightly, stirring him into heat again, and he fell against her, pressing against her yearning, churning body with its reawakened hunger and passion.
She never went anywhere that night.
They slept in the bedroom, and three times awakened to make passionate, playfully experimental love. By morning, their eyes had bags and they both had hangover-feelings. But they were happy, and he made love to her on the kitchen table, standing before her wide-eyed, loose-jawed face --
They slept all day.
* * *
Keith bit into a tuna club, and took a sip of Coke from the cup that threatened to spill at any moment. Sally sat beside him, eating in science. The bus moved monotonously along, and most of the passengers slept or merely stared through the tinted windows. The bus was still less than half full, even though more passengers had boarded at Clarksburg.
The bus would stop at Parkersburg, then Evansville, then Lexington, and finally St. Louis. From there, they would have to change buses to go farther west.
Keith thought of Jay Hawkes, and all his talk about going west. Jay. His wife's lover; the bastard who had tried to make him lose his mind, and finally to kill him. Jay and Marge: wife and buddy. The old classic, incredible pattern that happened in grade B movies and on TV, but never in real life -- hah!
He finished the sandwich, propped the paper cup holding the Coke on the floor in front of him, and lit a cigarette. He watched the smoke drift upward and get sucked out of the cabin by the vent.
He wondered if they had found his trail yet. Maybe, at any moment, the bus would have to stop at a roadblock -- state troopers, cars, striped sawhorses -- looking for a guy believed headed in this direction. Keith didn't want to think about it, but unconsciously checked the escape mechanism of the emergency exit beside him. He longed to open it, to see if it were in working order.
"Stop being so nervous," Sally said. "You've got a good head start."
"Yeah." He had to believe that he did, that he could be in Mexico before they knew what it was all about. Maybe they were playing it cool and had already notified Mexican authorities, and they'd just be calmly waiting for him When he got there.
No.
They wouldn't let him get that far; not him, a crazy, run-amok murderer, dangerous, possibly armed. Keith laughed shortly. Damn. He hadn't wanted to kill her. He'd thought of it in fits of anger and jealousy, but in the end, it had just happened, almost before he realized what he was doing. I lost my cool, he thought grimly. Really, truly lost it.
If he had more money, he could think of flying; but they'd be looking even more religiously at airports, all over the country. When a man wanted to run, he did it fast, and there was nothing faster than an airplane. No, planes had to be avoided.
He finished his Coke, and pushed the seat back to forty-five degrees; he tried to sleep, but his eyes kept popping open, especially when the bus slowed down. A roadblock! he'd think, but looking out the window, would find that the bus was only tailgating a slow car or truck in front, trying to pass. They were out of the treacherous mountains now, moving toward the Ohio border. The bus would swing south-southwest, into Indiana and finally Missouri.
* * *
It was four-thirty eight in the afternoon when Frick got a report over the teletype from Aberdeen, Maryland. Where the hell's that? he asked himself, then remembered: sort of a half-baked Reno, where you had quickie marriages instead of quickie divorces. Somewhere between Baltimore and Philly. Yeah, okay, now he was oriented.
Keith Larson had been there. He had checked into the Seaway Motel, had drunk in the bar, and -- this was the clincher -- had gone to a barbershop next morning to get a crewcut and his beard removed. Now they had to find a guy with his build and height, beardless, probably Joe College-looking. Hell, there were a thousand and one guys like that, everywhere, Frick thought. But there was hope. Larson had boarded a Greyhound headed toward St. Louis, which was the end of the line for that particular bus.
He picked up a phone.
"Notify ever police department between here and St. Louis," he said, "and tell them to stake living hell out of the Greyhound terminal in St. Louis; that's where he'll be stopping, probably just to hop another bus." Frick dropped the receiver back onto its hook, and waited. There was nothing he could do at this point, but wait. Wait for a report, any report. But hell, once you had a bead on a man like that, it was nearly impossible for him to worm out of it. He was as good as caught.
Just wait.
* * *
The bus stopped at Evansville for dinner. Keith and Sally went into the restaurant, and sat at a booth. It had been a tiring day, made so by lack of activity and frantic anticipation. His senses were drugged; he was logy and sleepy.
Suddenly he was jarred into consciousness by Sally's foot hammering against his left leg from across the table. He saw her eyes rolling upward, and he looked over her head -- to see an Indiana state trooper, looking studiously around. He seemed to be looking at every single individual as though he were looking for a specific person. Him.
Quickly, Keith put on sunglasses and a straw hat he'd picked up in Cincinnati. He baited his breath, hoping to fool the cop, who was now walking slowly and leisurely around the booths and counters, looking out of the corner of his eye at everyone.
He stopped in front of Keith.
Keith and Sally laughed and pretended to be wrapped up in conversation. He tried frantically, desperately not to let the cop know he was keenly aware of his presence.
Play it cool, Keith. Real real cool, baby -- He seemed to linger there forever. Why doesn't the sonofabitch LEAVE? Keith asked himself, Leave-leave-leave -- damnit! The cop left.
Keith started to get up, but Sally shook her head adamantly, and he forced himself to sit down.
"I'll go buy a candy bar at the cashier's," she said. He watched her get up and walk easily toward the cashier's desk, saw her glance through the large window in front facing the highway. She bought a large Baby Ruth, paid the woman, and drifted just as slowly back to the table.
"Three cars out there," she said, "all leaving."
"They're hot on my tail." He balled and unballed a hand nervously. "I wonder if they know I'm on this bus."
"They figured you were, but now they must figure they're wrong," she said. "Otherwise, they'd have picked you up. Maybe they think you jumped the bus somewhere back there, between Aberdeen and Cincy."
"Maybe. I don't know if I should go back on the bus--St. Louis'll probably be crawling with cops."
"It will." They remained silent for a while.
"Look," he said, "when we get there, they'll probably stop anyone who even remotely resembles me and ask for identification. And all I've got says Keith Larson. Driver's license, credit cards, everything."
"Hmm."
"I'm going to get caught if I go to St. Louis," he said. "I'll walk right into their loving arms."
"Hmm, yeah, maybe so," Sally mused. "Why don't we jump right here?"
"The driver counts the passengers -- I saw that trooper talking to him. If he's short, he'll probably call the police, and we'll be- right inside a net."
"So we go to St. Louis after all."
"And hope for something to turn up when we get there? Sally, if you're smart, if you have any brains at all, you'll pretend you don't know me. Sit in another seat. Head back east when we hit St. Louis."
"Nobody ever said I had brains, Keith," she said simply. "And nobody ever said I didn't have heart. Looks like you're stuck with me."
She smiled, and he had to smile. There weren't many around like Sally, he decided.
They boarded the bus. The police cars were gone, and Keith didn't notice that the driver looked at him with any special interest. He and Sally sat down, and finally the door closed, and the bus moved onto the highway toward St. Louis, heading northwest this time. After that, he'd pick a bus that headed straight west, non-stop, if they had one. This bus was too slow. It stopped in too many places. Then there was another large if: he might get picked up at St. Louis, and if he did, it would be all over. The papers were playing up the murder to the hilt -- even the "good" papers were making a tabloid-style nightmare out of it, and he doubted if there were enough unbiased people in the country, let alone in New York, to make up a jury that would listen to the defense. That theory about innocent until proven guilty was fine -- it made good conversation in high school government and constitution classes, but in actual practice, it was just that; idle conversation, lip service.
* * *
Later that evening, Frick got another report from the Indiana state police, which said in essence that they hadn't apprehended Keith Larson as yet. They had checked all westward-riding buses, trains and automobiles, via roadblocks and highway restaurant checks, and had found many people answering the suspect's description. But Keith Larson had evidently made it through the state without getting caught, if he did in fact ever come through the state in the first place.
Frick crumpled the message and threw it into the wastebasket. Larson was getting farther and farther away, slipping around like an eel. Had he headed west? Maybe he hadn't taken that bus out of Aberdeen very far. Had he jumped off and started hitchhiking south? Bought another car? Maybe. Frick put out an APB on used car lots, all points south and west and north. Maybe, with a little luck, he'd get a report on Keith, or someone answering to his description, having bought a car. A car was much easier to trace. Then he would have a license number, an exact description of the vehicle itself.
Frick wandered restlessly back and forth, waiting for Hawkes to come in, as he had promised. Hawkes had been a good friend of the Larsons, and had offered to help the police in any way possible. He seemed like a nice guy, genuinely shaken by the horror of Marge Larson's death.
Fifteen minutes later, Hawkes came in, carrying a sport jacket over his shoulder. A long, slender cigar was clenched between his even, white teeth.
"Lieutenant Frick?" Hawkes stood at the doorway, under the overhead fan that blew hot air from one end of the room to the other.
"Mr. Hawkes. C'mon in. How about a cup of coffee? It's maybe too hot to drink the stuff in this weather, but it's all I've got to offer."
"Fine. Black, please."
A patrolman came with the coffee, and Hawkes sat back in the wooden chair, facing Frick from across the desk.
"I still can't believe what happened, Lieutenant." Frick studied Hawkes' face, as he studied all faces unconsciously. It looked genuine. The guy had an immobile face to begin with, yet it was slightly twisted with shock.
"Was Larson a quick-tempered guy?"
"No, not usually; only where Marge was concerned. He was insanely jealous, and I used to warn him, tell him that Marge loved him and to stop acting as though he didn't trust her."
"But he didn't listen."
"Not where Marge was concerned," Hawkes affirmed. "We didn't become real close friends, the three of us, until after I'd sold my novel. By some freak, it became a best seller and I got rich fast; book clubs, movie options, the whole bit. Keith did the illustrations for the book, and stands to make a pile, himself."
"How much is a pile, Mr. Hawkes?"
"Twenty-five -- thirty thousand."
"A pile." Frick lit a cigarette. "Were you in love with Marge Larson, Hawkes?" The question came barreling out through a cloud of smoke, soft, quick, biting. Through the defense of hazy cigarette smoke, Frick watched for a reaction, from Hawkes -- nothing unusual; just slight surprise as a result of the sudden transition.
"I found her beautiful, fun to talk to, and sure, I had good healthy male thoughts about her -- who the hell wouldn't, with a woman like Marge? But love?" Jay laughed. "Nothing like it. And I liked Keith too much to ever think of going beyond the dreaming point."
"You saw Larson the night his wife died. What was he like?"
Hawkes drew on his cigar.
"Nervous. Shook up about something. At first, I thought it was about the news he'd gotten from my agent about his share of the royalties for those illustrations -- but it was more than that, I found out. It was about Marge."
"What about Marge?" Frick prodded. "He claimed she was seeing somebody -- another guy. I told Keith he was out of his mind, but he wouldn't listen. Said he knew she was seeing someone, and when he could prove it, somebody was gonna get themselves killed. I bought him a beer and told him to calm down." Typical response, thought Frick. "Was Keith jealous of you, Hawkes? Of your sudden fame as a writer?"
"I doubt it. Keith had a reputation of his own, and his illustrations for my novel will make it even greater."
"Too bad," Frick said dryly. "He had something going for him."
"Lieutenant, are you sure Keith did it? I mean, sure, he talked about killing her, but he was upset, bugged -- is that enough to hang a guy?"
Frick squashed his cigarette into an ash tray already piled high with a miniature mountain of the things. He leaned forward across his desk, and looked at Jay Hawkes.
"Hawkes, listen. He talked about it. His neighbors called the police and said someone better come quick, there's a helluva fight going on in the Larson apartment -- screaming and cursing and threats. We arrive. Marge Larson is strangled, and Keith Larson is long gone, his dresser turned inside out, and last heard from or about in Aberdeen, Maryland. Now for God's sake, what am I, a nasty old cop, supposed to think? What would you think?"
Hawkes lowered his head.
When he left, Frick tried to evade value judgments, concerning him. Nice guys committed murder all the time, because things happened that made them stop being nice guys for a fatal second. Hawkes was a nice guy. Larson was unquestionably a nice guy. He was also a murderer.
* * *
Keith felt lost. What chance did he have? How could he get back at Jay, that bastard, and run away at the same time? He could hardly defend himself and be a detective away from the scene, yet if they picked him up, it would be hopeless. Jay had a foolproof halo surrounding him, and the press had backed the image to the hilt: HORROR-STRICKEN FRIEND SUFFERS SHOCK.
Sure.
Jay was a smart man. Jay had always been smart, had always known where he was going -- nothing threw Jay, nothing rocked him out of that cool frame of mind he'd erected around himself.
It was dark, now.
"Got a cigarette?" Sally asked. He fished into his shirt pocket and found one, handed it to her and held the light. She dragged on it, and he could see her face in the light -- tired, weary, yet young. This tension wasn't doing her any good, he thought.
"We'll be in St. Louis in an hour," he told her. In the darkness, she nodded.
"Don't think about it," she said, and dropped her hand affectionately, idly on his knee. "Just be alert."
Jay Hawkes. His friend. Hah!
Don't think about it, he told himself savagely, don't think about it now. Later. Later, Jay will, as they say in bad melodramas, get his.
The bus slowed down, and Keith looked out the window. They were in St. Louis, working their way downtown, through the bright lights and neon signs and houses. Then they were pulling into the terminal, the busiest Keith had seen since Aberdeen. It swan with activity, and that was encouraging. Maybe in the midst of all the hubbub he could escape notice. Maybe. But he still had to buy a ticket, and if there were cops, they would assuredly be hanging around ticket windows. Plainclothesmen, probably looking, scrutinizing, studying, waiting to pounce.
He walked off the bus, and collected his suitcase and Sally's. They walked arm and arm together, laughing, striking up the pose of two people thoroughly oblivious to anything or anyone around them.
Police were there, all around.
They stood in the bus lanes and near the ticket windows. Everywhere. He wondered whether he should take off his sunglasses. It was late at night, and sunglasses might strike them as an obvious attempt at disguise. He removed them and jammed them into his pocket, but left the hat on. He'd changed his clothes in the men's room back in Evansville after that near-brush with the trooper in the restaurant. He could do nothing but brave the thing out, and hope that he'd make it through.
"Keep laughing," Sally said to him as they walked, "just laugh after I say anything." He laughed. It came easy after a while, because his nerves were ready to explode through his skin.
They walked to the ticket window, and now he suddenly knew that he had to ask for a specific destination, and not just "What's the fastest bus out of here, heading west?
He thought, trying to remember his geography. Not LA. Not Frisco. Not San Diego.
Where?
Then he had it: he remembered it from an old geography class: El Centro. It was at the bottom of the state, sitting right smack on the Mexican border. If he could just make it there, and slip into Baja California, he was home free.
"Yes, sir?" the lady in the window asked. "Two tickets to El Centro," he said, "non-stop, if you have them." Nearby, a suited older man leaned against a wall, trying so hard not to be obvious, that Keith knew he was a cop, and listening to every word. So he made his voice as normal as possible -- ironically, this was fun, even though the stakes were deadly high.
"No non-stops there," the woman said. "Got a non-stop to Santa Ana. You can hop a puddle-jumper from there to El Centro."
"Fine. Okay with you, hon?" he asked Sally. Sally laughed.
"Anything's fine with me, sweetheart."
"Okay, two tickets, please." The lady filled them out, and he gave her the money, and pocketed them.
They walked away toward the snack bar. The bus would be forty-five minutes in arriving. Keith extracted a pack of cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth, and purposely dropped the pack. He sighed and stooped over to pick them up. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced behind him. The guy was tagging right along.
They went into the snack bar and had two Cokes. The guy sidled up near them, and ordered a cup of coffee. Keith forced himself not to look his way. He kept talking to Sally about Irma, a name they'd made up, and they created her as they went along. "If I had her husband, I'd die," Sally said. "Aw, Harry's not a bad guy," Keith, said. "He's kind of drab, kind of dull, but he means well enough, I think."
"Well, I'm glad you're not like that, darling. And you'd better not be like that after we're married, either."
They laughed together.
"How could I be like Harry?" Keith laughed. "I won't have a wife like Irma."
"True." Another laugh. They sipped their Cokes, glancing at Sally's wrist watch.
Then: "Is your name Keith Larson?" the man asked and extracted his wallet, to which a badge was attached: St. Louis Metropolitan Police Dept.
"No, name's Kelly Jones, from Cincinnati. Who's -- what'd you say his name was?"
"Keith Larson. Could I see some identification, please, Mr. Jones?"
"Sure."
Keith pulled out his wallet. "I haven't got a drivers license. Damn thing got revoked, and I'm self-employed, you might say, so there's no social security card. And I don't believe in credit, so there ain't no credit cards, neither. Only thing in there's pictures of my kin and a Rotary Club card with my name on it."
The cop glanced at the contents of the wallet.
"And the young lady with you?"
"Sarah Lee Larkin," Sally said. "Kelly 'n me's gettin' married when we get to California." She squeezed Keith's arm and giggled; it came off like a charm. The cop sighed, put Keith's wallet in his hand, and wheeled around.
"Damn," Keith sighed, wiping sweat from his brow. "Goddamn!"
"See, I told you I'd better keep your identification in my purse."
"Where in hell is Kelly Jones? Does he exist?"
Keith asked, laughing shakily.
"Kelly Jones was a most unfortunate John, dear -- gave me a hard time, so I rolled him, but good. I threw away the wallet and took the money, but somehow, that damned Rotary Club card wound up in my own wallet. I guess I like memories."
For the first time, Keith laughed a genuine, heartfelt laugh.
"God, you're worse than I am!" he marveled. "Let's go stand in line for our bus."
They moved out into the main room, and walked to the gate where their bus had pulled in, and stood in line beside their suitcases. Another cop came toward them, but the older cop motioned him away, saying "They're okay."
CHAPTER FOUR
It had seemed rather senseless for Marge to hustle back and forth from the Bronx to the Village, so she had moved in with Keith in his apartment, and after a few weeks of it, began to feel the strain of making love all night and working all day. It seemed senseless to Keith, too. What the hell, we're in love with each other, aren't we? he asked himself. I make a fat living. We're compatible as two peanuts in a shell.
Marge had come to the same conclusions, and as a result of mutual consent, they took a walk one fine day to City Hall and took out a marriage license.
Several days later, they were married, and Marge quit her job.
"Where to?" Keith asked, taking her arm as they walked down Fifth Avenue.
"For a honeymoon?" she said excitedly. When Keith nodded, her eyes lit up, and he squeezed her arm.
"Anywhere you want to go, darling. Anywhere on earth for as long as our money holds out."
"You know where I always wanted to go? Where I always dreamed about?"
"Where?"
"Promise you won't laugh?" she asked coyly. They slowed their footsteps, so people walked around them in swarms.
"No, I might bust a gut laughing," he said happily, "because I've never felt so fine. I'd laugh at almost anything. It's great being alive," he told her.
"I want to go to Trinidad!" she said triumphantly, as though the words had been a struggle to release.
"Well, what's so funny about Trinidad? It's supposed to be a great place." Keith was incredulous that Marge thought it a peculiar place to want to go.
Trinidad is a lush, boot-shaped island off the northeast corner of Venezuela, choked with palm trees, most of them bearing heavy loads of coconuts in summer, and rimmed by impossibly white sand beaches, framed by the Caribbean and the Atlantic. It is a land that never knew the meaning of time -- the natives go happily about their business, while Europeans and Americans and Portuguese are unwittingly swallowed into the pattern. They forget how to rush, how to look at their watches, and as a result, Trinidad is a very fine place to go.
At least the Larsons thought so. Warm days on the sand: swimming, surfing, shell-hunting. Early in the morning and just before sunset, Keith would go surf-casting, standing in the sea up to his chest; it didn't matter whether he caught anything, just being there was the important thing. Days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into two months, browning the two of them.
Cool, sea-breezed nights in the solitude of their cottage bedroom...
"Keith, I love you, my darling."
"I love you, Marge." They melted into each other's arms, each trapped by the other's body, and the heat inside them gathered intensity as they made love on the bed, then under the covers as the cool breeze came whipping through the open windows. Two copper-colored people against white sheets, loins blindly searching for their counterparts, a tangle of thighs and arms, a harmonizing of passions -- But it had to end.
After two months, it ended.
And shortly after, it began.
Keith didn't know it was happening for quite a while. It started so slowly. Marge seemed to be losing a great deal of her passion, and their lovemaking became increasingly tepid and uninspired. When it became nothing more than an exercise, Keith mentioned it one night in bed.
"What's the matter, Marge? Are you tired?" Perhaps it was a come-down, back into reality from that island paradise, he thought. Perhaps she was bored, now that she wasn't working, and she seldom saw him during the day; he locked himself inside the studio and worked from early morning until dinnertime. She would see him once, at lunchtime, and then no more for the remainder of the afternoon.
"Nothing. We just see so little of each other," she said.
"I'm awfully busy. All that stuff I left before the honeymoon -- plus the current stuff. It won't always be this hectic. Besides, you want to go back someday, don't you, and to other places besides? I have to make money, dear girl." He patted her on the shoulder, and he felt it stiffen.
"Something is wrong, Marge."
"No, nothing," she insisted.
The following evening, Jay Hawkes came over, whom Keith hadn't seen since his return from Trinidad.
"Come on in, man!" he greeted the Indian enthusiastically. Jay stepped inside, looking just as tanned as ever, as lithe and trim and muscular as ever: not a city boy at all, Keith thought.
"Just wanted to congratulate you two," Jay smiled, "and kiss the bride." He stepped over to Marge, bent over her, and kissed her quickly. Keith stood by, beaming proudly.
"Thanks, Jay."
"And, a little present. But you'll have to sit down to get it," he said, with a gleam in his coal black eyes. Puzzled, Keith and Marge sat down on the couch.
"Okay," Jay said, still standing, "you ready?"
"Sure -- I guess," Keith replied.
"Well, you know that novel I was working on -- the one I read bedtime stories from?"
"Yeah."
"It's going to be published in a couple of months. I sold it."
"That's great!" Keith shouted, "Just great, boy! Man, if anything ever deserved a break, it was that novel."
"Okay," Jay said, holding up his hand (somehow he controlled the entire scene), "now here's your present, if you want to call it that. Actually, you're just the best man for it."
"I get an autographed copy," Keith smiled.
"Aw, hell, that's a foregone conclusion. No, buddy-boy, what the book needs, and it's in the contract, is illustrations. Lots of them. It's a novel like nothing else -- about this big country. Matt, my agent, wants to get a three-thousand-dollar advance for the artist, plus twenty-five per cent of all the royalties -- and the commissions come out of my royalties. You could make a bundle on this, Keith, and add to a fine reputation besides."
"Damn," was all Keith could say at the moment. He turned to Marge.
"You're awfully busy, darling. You hardly have time to do the things you're working on now."
"But this is big game, girl. This is the real thing ---something that I can get excited about artistically. Jay, you're on. How much time have I got?"
"Six weeks."
"You can do it." Jay handed him a typewriter-paper box; it was heavy, solid. "The carbon of the manuscript -- you'll have to read it, get deep down into it, and then do some research. I'll bring the books over I used. There aren't more than twenty or so. You'll have to pore over those, and just see it before you start working."
"The artistic process," Keith beamed. "Ah, Jay, it's been so damned long!"
Jay grinned, showing his flawlessly white, even teeth.
"I figured you'd jump, man. I don't care what the gang at Antonio's says, you're no hack."
"They were saying that, huh?" Keith asked, his face clouding.
"Some of 'em. The hell with 'em. They'll eat mush when this book gets published and out on the stands -- we'll have to work pretty close together, Keith. I hope you don't mind me staring over your shoulder while you work. But it'll have to be like that."
"I work under pressure all the time," he told Jay. "No sweat."
The three of them had a drink to celebrate the event, and Jay finally made his exit. He kissed Marge, shook Keith's hand warmly, and then they were alone.
"Well, the guy made it," Keith said, after he left. "And now I'm going to make it, too."
"You've made it very nicely, darling. We do fine."
Keith's face darkened.
He turned to Marge.
"I don't mean money," he said with a slight edge to his voice. "I mean in another way -- artistically. I've been doing commercials so long, I forgot what the real thing could be."
"Keith, suppose it doesn't sell? I mean, suppose the book flops."
"It's still three grand. Is that bad for six weeks' work?"
"No -- I just don't want you falling behind in your other things. Your clients might get angry."
"Let me handle it, huh?" he said abruptly. "I think I know my work pretty well."
"Certainly, darling. I was only trying to be helpful."
He heard, felt the hurt in her.
"Aw, hell, baby -- I'm just excited, on edge. I'm sorry. Can't you see what a great thing this is?" he implored, taking Marge in his arms and rocking her gently against him.
They stayed in each other's arms for several moments, then broke the embrace. Marge seemed to be limply indifferent.
He stayed up all night reading the manuscript. Jay's prose was fast-moving and hard-hitting. It carried the story along, which was more of a saga or an epic. Every chapter contained different people, in different times -- from 1492 to 1965, in no special order. The only thing that held the book together was what the men and women had in common: dissatisfaction with their lives, wanderlust, greed, restlessness, a dream of what it was like "on the other side."
He read six-hundred-odd pages that night, and when he finished at five-thirty in the a.m. his eyes were burning. He felt certain that he would have to read it again, at a slower, less concentrated pace to get all the meat out of it. Jay had talent. He knew what he was talking about. Keith felt the excitement stirring inside him -- his imagination would have free play in this little venture! No flattery, no artificiality, just the way he saw it, the way he envisioned it.
He spent three hectic nights reading what Jay brought over for him to read: original journals and narratives of explorers and trappers and traders. It was raw, vital stuff, written by semi-literate men who judged by intuition and impression alone. He saw it with increasing clarity.
On the fourth day, he was ready to begin work. He called Jay and told him.
"I have to keep it down to evenings," he said. "I've still got a wagonload of other stuff, and I've got two and three sittings a day for the rest of the week."
And it went that way: night and day, day and night, meals on the run, sleep only when he had to, and within two weeks, Keith was dull-eyed and unalert with heavy fatigue. But Jay was over every night, and they would work together for two, three hours -- then Jay would leave the studio and talk to Marge. It was a fine arrangement, to Keith's way of thinking. It would take some of the sting out of it for her. At least she'd have someone to talk to, instead of being dreadfully alone.
At the end of four weeks, he barely functioned. He'd been on dex and bennies for a week, at Marge's gentle insistence ("They won't hurt you darling, you have to keep going, then you can sleep after it's all over"), and his nerves were starting to crumble. Noises, however slight, made him jump hysterically; his body twitched, his appetite dwindled down to nothing. He felt warm and cold at once. All the symptoms of too much stimulant were working at him. Yet he managed to work. He stopped making love to his wife, stopped doing anything that required the least energy. He went on working.
And the pattern continued.
He and Jay would work for a few hours together, and then Jay would talk to Marge while Keith went on doggedly working, fighting his nerves, himself, both of which threatened to collapse at any moment.
He made the deadline.
The book went to press, and he received his advances. He canceled all but his most pressing projects, and spent the time resting. Jay continued to come over in the evenings, and very early, Keith would excuse himself and go to bed.
"You two talk, man," he'd say, "don't let me break up the party."
"I'll be leaving pretty soon," Jay would smile.
He and Marge almost never made love any more.
Worn. Tired. Exhausted.
But the work didn't stop, and neither did Jay's frequent visits. Keith recuperated slowly, very slowly -- so slowly that it seemed as though he made no progress at all.
One day, the first royalty check came in the mail. Keith's was for eight hundred dollars, Jay's for well over three thousand.
"I think we oughta have a drink tonight," Jay suggested laughingly over the phone. "Tell you what; you and Marge meet me at my place, and we'll do it in style."
"Hell, Jay, I'm beat---why don't you just come over here and we'll tend our own bar?"
"Sure, man. You oughta take it easier, Keith. Lay off the work. God knows, you can afford to."
"Yeah. But it just keeps closing in."
"Well, see you tonight."
Jay and Marge had a lot to drink. They were in a party mood, Keith noticed dully; they laughed at everything one said to the other, and they sat close, sometimes very close together, on the sofa, while Keith rested in his reclining chair. He felt out of it, removed and remote from the scene -- like looking through a steamy window from the outside. Jay and Marge smiled into each other's eyes, and he smiled weakly, glad that they all hit if off so very well.
They were great friends, all of them, he thought -- that was a fine thing Jay had done' for them, giving him this chance.
After Jay went home, and he and Marge were in bed, they made love.
Tired, disinterested love.
She lay there, and he took her, trying to make himself excited by the lush abundance of flesh -- he pawed at her breasts and thighs, dragging her across the bed from one side to the other. But it wasn't the same. The sense of wonder, the quivering sensations just did not exist. And Marge seemed eminently bored by the procedure. He took her, reached a purely physical release, and rolled away, fell away into exhausted, heavy sleep.
He had a reputation now. He began to get assignments for illustrations, which he preferred, since it didn't necessitate flattery and human contact with the people to be flattered. Little by little he cut off his portrait work, to Marge's dismay.
"Why can't you do both?" she implored.
"God, you are hungry, aren't you?" he said testily. "Well, I just haven't got time. Or energy."
Hurt. Sulking.
Silence between them.
He felt sleepy all the time; he had to struggle to stay awake, even' after a long night's sleep. What's wrong with me, he wondered. I'm falling apart like an old man.
And Jay continued to come by.
Sometimes, he brought a date with him, but more often, he came alone.
"You two are too special for just any old broad to pick up on," he'd grin. "Most of the woman I know are pure dullards."
On and on and on and on. It never stopped; he became frantically busy again, as assignments rolled in, one on top of the next. Soon, he stopped the pretense altogether, and just went straight to bed after dinner, when he had the strength to eat at all. Jay continued to come over.
Good old Jay, he'd think. At least Marge had somebody to be with. He would stir contentedly in the bedroom, and drift off into deep, sluggish sleep.
Sometimes, he imagined that he heard voices: their voices, but with a strange ring to them. Deep-throated, intimate, husky -- sounds of rustling, a moan.
Drugged, he thought -- so damned sleepy I'm imagining things, and Keith was too tired and too lethargic to ever get up. He would drift off into sleep, and when he awakened the next morning to Marge sleeping peacefully, he'd laugh to himself about the crazy dream he'd had the night before. Damn, he thought, next thing you know, you'll be accusing Jay of making it with your wife. That was a laugh; of all people, not Jay, however beautiful and tempting Marge might be.
And Marge tried to make him rest.
"Keith, slow down before you put yourself in the hospital. Take a few days off -- by yourself. Relax completely."
But he couldn't.
There was so much to get out, so much more coming in, and there was no end to it. He went to bed earlier and slept later, which cut his work hours shorter; and he fell farther and farther behind. There was only one consolation: money. In three months, he had earned over ten thousand dollars, including another royalty check from Jay's novel. There'd be plenty of money for his funeral, he thought wryly.
Every so often, he'd imagine those voices again, while he lay on the brink of sleep in the bedroom. He'd laugh, if he had the energy, and sink into unconsciousness.
Something was happening to his life; it wasn't the idyllic bliss he'd counted on.
CHAPTER FIVE
Roswell, New Mexico. The bus pulled in for dinner. Keith and Sally got up, stiff-legged, cramped, and made their way out of the bus, into the blazing furnace that awaited them outside. For hours, the bus had rolled across the country, through endless miles of prairies and tall grass and corn and desert -- inside, the bus had been cool and comfortable. Now, out of the air-conditioned interior, they walked directly into Hell.
"This is unbearable," Sally said. "I'm afraid we can't make our dessert stop today." Keith smiled ruefully.
"It'd kill us both. Besides, there's nothing but open country here." Everywhere they looked, there was nothing but sand, sage and cactus. It was hellishly barren terrain.
They ate lunch. As they ate, three state troopers walked inside and looked around. Keith tensed himself and tried to go on eating. The policemen looked intently around them, and Keith knew they were looking for him. Again. On the trail, off the trail -- only these cops seemed to know what they were looking for.
"I'm running," he said under his breath to Sally, and looked quickly around him. Two troopers stayed around the front entrance. The rear entrance, as far as Keith could see, was unwatched. He didn't exactly run; slowly, leisurely (while his heart surged in his throat), he walked near the rear of the restaurant, where a cigarette machine stood just to the side of the entrance. Fishing in his pocket for the right change, he dropped a quarter and a dime into the machine, and pulled the plunger. A package of cigarettes dropped out, with a pack of matches. He glanced into the mirror on the face of the machine.
The trooper was making his way toward the counter where Sally sat.
Quickly, he glided out the rear door, and took off across the desert at full gallop, running until his breath choked and burned his throat; he felt sure his lungs would explode from unaccustomed running.
He ran.
Unable to run any more, he jumped into an open ditch. It was surprisingly cool, beneath the burning surface, and he stayed there. Removing his hat and sunglasses, he peeked over the rim, and saw two troopers looking out the back door, from where he'd just come.
They were looking for him, he knew.
They knew what Keith Larson was supposed to look like, now.
His suspicions were confirmed by the sound of sirens, and three more cars pulled up to the side of the building. From his vantage point seven hundred yards away, he could see troopers piling out of the cars, armed with their usual pistols -- and Thompson subs. He laughed. After big game, he thought. Me. I'm desperate and dangerous, ready to kill -- he laughed more. Hell, all he wanted to do was run and run and run and get as much distance between himself and them as possible. He didn't want to kill anyone.
He hadn't wanted to kill Marge.
Not really.
What about Sally? he thought suddenly. How was he going to get to her? The trooper had seen them together, talking at the counter -- would she worm out of it all right. And damn it, there was his suitcase on the bus, which was no doubt guarded like a honeycomb at this point. No point in even thinking of getting it back. He had the clothes on his back and about six hundred dollars left in his wallet. Well, that was something, anyway. He could keep moving with money.
They knew where he was.
They knew where he was headed.
He'd have to think of another spot; north? south? east? Lord, where?
I don't even know what direction I'm running in, he thought with something like panic. I'm just running blind, like an animal -- an animal. Me, Keith Larson, civilized human being, running like an animal because for a fleeting moment I was an animal.
It all came back -- the whole horrible thing. He shuddered, and peeked over the ditch again. He heaved himself out of the ditch; no one seemed to be there, and he kept running. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a road sign, U.S. Route 87 W. There was no place to turn.
Then he heard the sirens. Instinctively, Keith veered away from the road and hit the dirt with nauseating impact, landing behind some tall sage.
The cars went streaking by.
Four of them. Rapidly, he calculated: three cars, plus the first car made four. That was all of them, and they hadn't seen him. Several minutes later, the bus went down the same road, and from the brush, he thought he saw Sally's face. He wasn't sure, but nor could he wait to find out; it was hardly a luxury he could afford. Too bad, he thought sadly. Sally was a good girl to have along. In her own way, she'd managed to keep him upright and sane. Now, he'd have to go it alone.
Hitchhiking was out of the question. There would be roadblocks and warnings everywhere, plus a few unflattering, but highly accurate pictures duplicated by some smart police artist. As a mental aside, Keith wondered what made an artist want to be a cop -- he could understand a cop wanting to be an artist, but not the other way around.
He stayed where he was until it grew dark. His stomach growled, and his throat was parched with thirst. The food could wait, he told himself. It could wait indefinitely -- but the water couldn't. Soon, he would have to find it. A breeze rippled across the desert and cooled him; he began to shiver, and wished he were dressed more warmly: at least a long-sleeved shirt. He kept moving keeping far enough from the road not to be seen, close enough to see the occasional headlights that drifted by. It was the one way to make sure he was heading west. He had thought of his direction and it seemed to him that the police would anticipate his changing direction, figuring that he had figured they knew where he was going. No doubt they had questioned the ticket lady in St. Louis, and she'd told them he'd bought a ticket for Santa Ana. He wondered how Sally had managed to worm her way out of it -- but it didn't matter. He had to stop thinking about Sally, about everything except getting there without getting caught.
He walked until the sky began to lighten, and as soon as it did, he looked for a place to hide. The country was hilly here, and up ahead of him loomed mountains. He wasn't sure what mountains they were, and didn't care. They were mountains; there'd be water soon, and more places to hide.
He had pulled his shirt out of his waist, and he thanked heaven for the sunglasses and hat.
By the time the sun was well up, he had found a covey of rocks, and nearby was a stream. It looked clear. For a brief moment, he hesitated, remembering that the Southwest was famous for its alkali creeks, with water capable of giving a person dysentery or even killing him. Gingerly, he stuck his finger in the water and tasted. It was fresh--yes, fresh, and he jammed his face into it and drank greedily, soaking his head, even taking his shirt off and splashing it on his chest. Then he moved up into the rocks and stayed under one that jutted out enough to offer some semblance of shade.
Funny how you instinctively know What to do, he thought. He'd never been a Boy Scout, had never been in any place wilder than Long Island -- but he knew what to do in order to preserve his precious hide. He knew where to find water, that shade was important, that rest was important. He knew.
Somehow, he managed to sleep. He awakened with a sudden jolt, horrified that he had slept at all. How ironic if the police just walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Let's go, Mr. Larson." But he couldn't avoid sleep, he thought hopelessly. He couldn't stay awake twenty-four hours, day after day, night after night. All he could do was find the best hiding place he could, and sleep.
Now, he waited for dark.
* * *
Frick didn't know whether to smile or curse. It was summer, and there Wasn't a cop in New York who wouldn't give his eye teeth to get the hell out of the city -- to escape the heat, the smell, the noise, the quick tempers engendered by that heat. But here he was, with carte blanche to leave and follow Keith Larson, wherever it might lead.
So where did Larson decide to run? The hottest damned part of the country -- New Mexico, of all places. Frick tried to slow his mind down, and think one step at a time. He had a habit of thinking faster than he could sort out the contents. His mind would be way ahead of his ability to catalogue and put in order.
Okay.
Larson was seen in Roswell. He ran. Got away. The whole state was road blocked, netted and crawling with troopers, county police and local sheriffs, but as of five minutes ago, still no Larson. Everyone seemed to think that Larson would change his direction, and head north. Two reasons. One, they were on to his original plans, and he knew it. Two, he would be more concerned with the heat than anything else. He could either shoot toward Mexico from there (which is what I would do,) thought Frick, or shoot north up into Colorado, into the mountains. So many possibilities. So damned many.
An hour later, he was at Kennedy Airport waiting for a non-stop 707 to Albuquerque, the nearest city with a jet airport -- from there, he'd be met by the commissioner of State Police, and briefed on all the operations. Then, he'd be in on the chase. Out in that hot, goddamned desert heat, that cooking sun, going places where no sane lizard would go. Fun, he thought dryly, real fun. Just what you were looking for, Frick.
As the plane winged its way toward New Mexico, Frick felt sure that Larson didn't have a prayer. How could a man without equipment, without experience, possibly make it through that country? Not a chance. By the time he got there, Larson would be caught, contained, half dead from thirst and exposure.
* * *
When night fell, Keith crawled out of the rocks. He had to have food. He was ravenous -- he hadn't seen food since yesterday. Somewhere, there had to be food, he thought; a shack, a gas station, a diner. Something, somewhere. But he had to be careful: the state was drag-netted, and his face would by this time be something of an institution.
Two hours later, still heading west, he came to a house. It had to be a house, because it was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and there were no signs or gas pumps or anything around it.
And, a light burned. A flickering light, which meant a lantern or a candle or something -- or a weak generator. But there was no electricity around. Cautiously, he approached, careful not to trip over rocks or bump into cactus, which was still thick, even in these bills that would soon be mountains.
"Stop! Stop or I'll shoot!" someone yelled. A woman. What in hell would a woman be doing out here? he wondered, and took another step.
"Damn it, I said stop, or I'll scatter your brains out!" Keith heard a sharp, cracking sound, like the snapping of a bolt or closing of a breech.
It turned out to be a breech --- and a woman.
He saw the gun before he saw the woman: an over-and-under, eight-gauge shotgun with a .22 target-spotter on top: a deadly weapon no matter how you looked at it, and Keith was looking right square into three barrels. The woman stood where she was, a dark, silhouetted figure. Her voice sounded young.
"Walk real slow, mister, with your hands up. If they drop an inch, I'll shoot." He walked.
Slowly, with his hands raised over his head.
"Stop." He stopped. Now he was right in front of her, and he could see her under the bright moon. Young, somewhere around his age, he figured, and very attractive, in spite of the faded Levi's and man's plaid shirt, a few sizes too large. No make-up. Black hair hanging in twin braids. Good breasts.
An Indian.
Like Jay Hawkes, perhaps?
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I got lost," Keith said. "I'm headed toward California."
That got a harsh belly laugh.
"Goddamn, mister, you mean to tell me you're going through the Sacramento Mountains, that you're gonna walk to California? Come on!"
"I haven't got any money."
"So you're leggin' it through these rough-ass hills instead of thumbin'. Who are you, mister?" Keith was silent.
The end of the line, he thought. She had him, and if she knew who he was, she'd turn him in.
"You don't have to tell me," she said. "You're that fellah from New York who croaked his old lady. You know, you're worth a bundle? They got ten thousand bucks ridin' on your carcass."
This is it, he thought; and a damned woman, too. Tough -- but a woman.
"Why'd you kill her?"
"It's a long story," he sighed, "and it's damn hard to talk standing here in the cold with my hands up in the air."
"Jealous?" she persisted harshly. "Another man?"
"She tried to kill me. She and her boy -- my best friend tried to kill me. But there's more." He began to grow desperate, but struggled to keep the desperation out of his voice.
"Put your hands down and come on in the house," the woman said. "I don't reckon you're in much shape to do nothin'." Relieved, Keith dropped his arms and followed her into the house. It was a three-roomer, with a large living room with fireplace -- a kitchen and a bedroom. The latrine was in back, he later discovered.
"Let me sit down," he said, and plumped into the only chair in the living room. The rest of the furniture consisted of wooden crates and thrown-together benches. "I've been walking since early yesterday."
"Want somethin' to eat?"
"Please. That's what I came here for in the first place."
When the Indian disappeared into the kitchen, Keith wondered in a fleeting moment of panic if she had a telephone, and was going to call the police.
"Don't worry," she yelled from the kitchen. "I'm not about to have any conversation with cops." She spat the words contemptuously from her lips. Keith relaxed, and she brought in half a roasted chicken, a bottle of beer and several slices of bread.
"Thanks." He ate ravenously, oblivious to her watching him. When he finished, he sipped hesitantly at the beer. It was warm. But good. Liquid -- good.
"How'd it happen?" she asked. He told her. She listened. When he finished talking, she shook her head.
"Sounds like you picked yourself a real bargain. The papers said you're an artist, that you made a lot of money. That right?"
"It was. Now I'm just running."
"Would you do it again?"
"What? Kill my wife? No, I doubt it. But there wasn't time to think -- I went off my rocker."
"You can stay here for a few days if you want," she said. "No goddamn cop's gonna set foot here unless I say it's okay."
"You sound as if you don't like them."
"I'm a Navajo, mister. My father was a chief, only he acted like a lizard -- my brother decided he'd had it, and left the reservation, headed toward Santa Fe to look for a job -- he couldn't find work any place, so he hung around. The cops got him on a vag charge, threw him in the tank and kept him there. Some cop got drunk and beat hell outta him, with his hands tied to the bars. Sport, man, great kicks, beating hell out of an Injun kid. My brother came back to the reservation with twenty some stitches and not enough spirit to talk back to my old man." She stubbed out a cigarette, a roll-your-own, grabbed Keith's beer and took a sip. "No, I'm out to shaft any cop I can, mister. If you live in this state, and you're Indian, it comes natural."
Her name was Jenny, she told him. She'd jumped the reservation, had been living up here for a year, mostly on welfare, partly on buying and selling junk whenever she found a wrecked car or something in the hills. But mostly welfare.
"I don't see people for weeks at a time," she told Keith. "You're the first man I've seen for three months."
She looked at him. He looked at her. She moved toward him.
* * *
The insanity had come upon him slowly.
He began by losing things. Ingrained, inflexible habits began to waver -- then they would disintegrate altogether. Like the wrist watch: he always put it on the night table by his side of the bed before going to sleep, so he would remember to wind it and put it on his wrist next morning. He'd been doing it for years.
But one morning, the watch wasn't there.
He shrugged it off until after he'd had his first cup of coffee, which Marge made for him; also an ingrained custom. But a gnawing curiosity would not go away. He had to know what happened to that watch.
"Marge have you seen my watch?" he asked over the rim of the cup. Marge, still dressed in a sheer nightgown, turned and smiled.
"I think you left it in the bathroom," she said.
"I never do that," he insisted, "I always leave it on the night table."
"I'd swear I saw it resting on back of the toilet, Keith."
Funny -- who in hell would leave his wrist watch on the back of a toilet bowl? he wondered. Not him.
But when he looked, it was there, just where Marge had said it was. It was strange; it bothered him. But when he got lost in his work, he forgot the incident altogether.
That night, half-drugged with fatigue, he made a note to put the watch on the night table. There it is, he told himself, remember, you put it there!
Next morning, he couldn't find it, and the night before was fuzzy -- he couldn't determine whether it had been a dream or actuality.
And, over coffee: "Marge, have you seen my watch?"
"Keith, you're getting to be an absent-minded professor. Yes, it's in the living room on the coffee table, where you took it off last night."
"But I put it on the night table."
"No, dear. It's on the coffee table. I saw you put it there." Her voice was light and gentle, which made it all the more exasperating.
"Hell," he muttered, and went to look. It was there. But he forgot about that incident, too, because his work obliterated time and room for any other thoughts.
At the end of that week, Marge suggested he go see a doctor.
"I really think you should, darling. You're headed for a nervous breakdown -- you've been working much too hard again, and you never really recovered from the last time."
"Damn it, I'm not nuts!" he said irritably.
"Of course you're not. But you are exhausted, and your mind isn't up to par. And how could it be, tired as you are?" Her hand rubbed the back of his neck, and for a moment, he closed his eyes.
God, I am tired, he thought. He tried to snap his eyes open, but couldn't -- it was mid-morning, and Marge had come into the studio with a cup of coffee for him.
"Darling, poor darling, you work so hard," she said sympathetically.
He heaved himself out of it, like a man dragging himself out of quicksand, and went back to work.
That night, Jay came over. He and Marge had a few drinks, while Keith stuck doggedly to black coffee, thinking I oughta stay awake for one night for God's sake, instead of flaking out like an old codger.
But he nodded off slowly, in his reclining chair. Their voices became fainter and fainter and fainter, as though they were leaving, going toward another part of the apartment -- but he couldn't open his eyes or snap himself into complete consciousness. It was as though he were drugged. His last coherent thought was You'd think with all this black coffee in me I'd be wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.
His last waking thought.
He slept.
When he awakened, it was early morning, and he didn't remember a thing. Didn't remember undressing or getting ready for bed -- kissing Marge good night -- turning out the lamp.
Taking his watch off.
Marge insisted that he'd done all those things. But he didn't remember! He hit his skull with the flat of his hand in a gesture of helpless frustration. What's happening? he asked himself savagely.
"Did Jay come over last night?" he asked Marge later.
"No, darling. He's supposed to drop by tonight. Why don't you take the afternoon off and rest, so you'll be decent company for once? Jay comes over here for some man-talk, and winds up with me."
"I can't; too much work." He went inside the studio with a sinking, depressed feeling in the pit of his stomach, wondering how he could go on like this, with his mind slipping away from him -- he knew he was going crazy, but like a man standing paralyzed in the middle of the road watching a truck hurtling toward him, he could do essentially nothing. He could only watch his own destruction, like an alter ego looking calmly on.
Maybe he'd better go see a doctor.
Hell, suppose he collapsed completely, and couldn't work for weeks, months. Well, maybe later -- maybe next week, he shrugged, going to work at a canvas.
* * *
Jay arrived with a fifth of Chivas and a broad, white-toothed smile, a kiss for Marge (more lingering than Keith would have liked, had he been awake enough to see it), and a handshake for Keith which the latter hardly had strength to return in full measure.
"Tonight we eat, drink and be merry!" Jay bubbled, and stretched his long, lean body out on the couch, kicking his shoes off. He craned his head around to look at Marge -- their eyes held each other's for several long, burning, slow-measured seconds.
"My agent called me around dinner," he said, "to tell me the book is about to go into its third printing. Know what that means?"
"More money," Marge answered. Keith obviously hadn't heard.
"That's right! And you know, I'm not like a lot of writers. When the money comes in, my mind goes wild with ideas. I'm fifty-some pages into my next book."
"What's it about?" Marge asked.
"Cabeza de Vaca -- old, Sixteenth Century Spanish explorer; had a wild, hairy life over here -- slave for eight years, got away, went and played healer to the Indians, thought he was some kind of god. Oh hell, it's just too wild!"
"Sounds like a biography."
"Now! I'm using facts, sure, but I'm altering a lot of them, too -- the fictional element's a helluva lot more important. Think Keith would want to do some illustrating for this? I've decided to make that a standard as long as I'm on this America kick."
Keith heard his name mentioned.
"Huh?" he asked dully.
"Illustrations," Jay said. "You want to do some more illustrations, is what I asked?"
Keith uttered some incoherent sound, and was asleep.
In his sleep, he heard mutterings, murmurings, but couldn't force his eyes open or consciousness into focus. The next morning, he awakened in bed, but of course couldn't remember getting there. Marge told him he'd turned in early, had excused himself as usual, and she and Jay had talked until ten o'clock or so.
"He's working on another book, and wants you to illustrate for him. Could you turn down a few of your assignments?"
"I suppose I'll have to. I can't go on working like this. I've got one more deadline to make, and I'm going to call a temporary halt to future assignments. I've just got to rest. And that'll give me lots of time to work with Jay. In fact," he added, "I'm going to cut down to mornings, period. Others do it, and they're in much better shape than I."
"That sounds like you're thinking," Marge beamed. "You really should take it easy -- we hardly see each other any more, and we never talk like we used to. I miss you these days, Keith." She made her voice plaintive, despairing.
Keith put his arms around her and tickled her face with his beard.
"It's all gonna change, baby, every insane moment. We're gonna have lots of time together -- as soon as I get back in shape, you'll see what you've been missing." He pinched her buttocks playfully, and she yelped, jumping away. He tried to chase her around the apartment as he once had, but his legs began to tremble as soon as he tried to run. But he was getting there, he told himself. At least he still had the spirit; he just needed the ability, the physical wherewithal.
Which was totally lacking.
A grown man with the strength of an infant, he realized with despair. Why was he so weak? He worked hard, too hard -- but he slept more than the average -- and still hopelessly exhausted.
Keith followed through on his resolution to cut down the workload, and turned down every assignment that came in, with an explanatory letter to the effect that it was temporary, he was having problems with his health, and that by late fall, he hoped to be back on full schedule. Most of the publishers understood, knowing his reliability and talent. Very few, ironically the small-timers, turned him down altogether and very perfunctorily told him where to go.
He awakened at eight and worked until noon, exclusively on Jay's novel. He drew on the basis of the carbon as it came to him. Afternoons were spent lying on the bed reading additional material Jay had given him: original narratives, a few scholarly works, old maps drawn by de Vaca himself -- and had Keith enjoyed normal health, he would have luxuriated in the relative relaxation.
But he didn't improve. If anything, he seemed to grow worse. He had all he could do to stay awake. Marge was great.
She'd bring him lunch, coffee, anything he wanted, would insist he take a nap in the afternoon for a couple of hours. She ministered to him quietly, without gushing matronly sympathy.
One evening Jay came over with more manuscript, and gave it to Keith.
"You gonna stay awake tonight, old man?" he asked playfully. "You know, you sleep so thick, I could ball your wife right on the couch in front of you and you'd never know."
They laughed at the absurdity of the idea.
"Let's have a drink," Jay suggested.
"Not Keith," Marge said. "Alcohol's the last thing he needs."
"Just a short one, hon? Real weak?"
"Well, very short. And very weak. I'll make it." Keith watched her make a Scotch and water for him; the drink came out almost as clear as pure water.
Then she snatched the drink from him, as well as Jay's.
"It's better with ice," she said. "Ill go into the kitchen with these and put some in."
"I hear you're cooling it these days," Jay said, while she was gone.
"Yeah. I'm just doing the book."
"Good. You're killing yourself, man."
"I'm still beat," Keith confided, and wondered whether or not he should tell Jay about his crazy lack of memory and possible hallucinations: the watch and all. No, better not. Jay'd just say he was too tired, like Marge, and besides, he was too tired to rehash the story.
Marge returned with the drinks. "Here we are," she said, "nice and cold." Keith was conscious of her appearance: she looked lovely, he thought proudly. She was wearing one of her sexy nightgowns, with a new, oriental-type robe over it; Jay was close enough to them for her to not to be concerned with what she wore. But by God, it was alluring -- if he had any strength, he'd hint at Jay to leave, and take her into the bedroom -- it'd been a long time. Weeks. Too long. A man should have enough strength to make love to his wife once in a while, Keith decided, especially a wife like Marge. They should be at it all the time, like two little woods creatures. Well, when he got better -- then he'd make up for it.
"How's the book going?" he asked Jay, who sat on the couch as always, his long, lithe legs stretched in front of him.
"No hangups. A sheet goes in empty, comes out with words. Got it all in my mind, you dig?"
"Good."
"How's the book going for you?"
"Same way. Easy. I can see it all happening."
"Larson, we'll be rich."
"I couldn't take it. I'd kill myself trying to spend it."
"At this point, you would," Marge interjected. "But when you get better, we'll think of ways, darling." She and Jay laughed, and for a fleeting moment, Keith wondered who darling was. He shook his head, as though to remove annoying cobwebs, and sipped his drink. I don't want the damned thing, he thought, and put it on the table beside him. It tasted like chemically butchered water. Vile. Probably because he hadn't had a drink in so long.
Shortly after ten o'clock, he excused himself.
"I'm beat, people. 'Scuse me while I go to bed."
"Okay. I'll be leaving in a few minutes, myself," Jay said. "See you soon with more of the book."
"Yeah." Keith yawned, and they shook hands. He bent over and kissed Marge on the forehead, and exited into the bedroom.
Later, he stirred himself partially awake.
He heard sounds. Weird, yet familiar sounds.
He reached and groped in the dark for his watch, which he supposed was on the night table. It wasn't there. Of course: he was coming to accept his silly absent-mindedness by now -- he had no idea what time it was. Where in hell did I put my watch this time? he wondered. He was too tired to concern himself with it, and rolled over to the other side of the large bed and fell off.
But he heard the sounds, still. Distant, remote, as if in another dimension, but still within the confines of his awareness.
"Umm."
"Ahh-- "
"Don't -- he might hear -- "
"No, it's okay, he's asleep."
"Jay -- please -- " Helluva crazy dream, he thought fitfully. And outside the bedroom, on the living room couch, Marge felt her resistance weakening as Jay revered her partially naked body with warm kisses and caresses. She burned; itched, and she lay against the cushions helplessly as he stripped her. He pulled her robe off her shoulders, and gently lifted the weightless nightgown from her body. She squirmed desperately against him, clawing at his clothing. Little by little she relaxed, as she always did, knowing that Keith was lost in drugged sleep, and would not awaken until morning.
Jay's fingertips worked her nipples, swelling them into firmness, Their tongues lost themselves in each other's yawning, passion-widened mouths, and she felt his ardor stir against her sensitized belly. Huge, full of blind wanting.
A long, breathy moan escaped her lips when he meshed with her, and they locked in embrace on the couch. His hands clasped her buttocks and drew her closer. She felt sheer, heady pleasure stirring rhythmically inside her, and their movements against one another were slow and gentle, paced for utmost pleasure. His teeth sank into her flesh. She bit back, smiling and gasping and reveling in his savage embraces.
It wasn't her fault, she thought, not really. She had waited so long for Keith to treat her like a woman again, until the burning inside her became unbearable, and now -- now she was a woman again, felt like a woman in all her natural glory and beauty, as this magnificent, strong man -- But it is my fault, she told herself. I'm making it happen. I want it to happen. It has to happen, for me and Jay.
"Ooh, Jay my darling! I'm ready!" she whimpered, and Jay's body crashed against her, and she felt the first, joyous shudders of release well up in her. Their lips clung honey-like to one another's, and their bodies slowed down by degrees as all the lust ebbed out of them.
CHAPTER SIX
She moved toward him.
The lantern flickered unevenly, and it made her seem even more undulating and liquid in her movements as Keith stood there, watching Jenny lick her lips sensuously.
"You're beat, but you're handsome," she said. "I bet you can cut it with Jenny -- you'd better cut it if you wanna earn your keep here."
He was tired.
His eyes burned, his skin felt tight and dry from the hours of sun, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
"Could I wash up and lie down for a while?" he asked, trying not to make his voice pleading.
"Yeah. Sure. I forgot you're recovering -- from that bitch and what she did to you. Damn miracle she didn't kill you. Okay, go to sleep for a while, but mark it, Mister, you ain't gonna sleep through till morning. Jenny's hungry."
He managed a knowing grin, and went into the kitchen.
"The pump's out back," she called, "if it's water you're lookin' for." He went out and found the pump. With an effort, he managed to push it up and down enough times to gush water in the waiting bucket.
He took off his clothes.
It was cool; he'd probably wind up with pneumonia, but didn't give a damn. He just wanted to be clean, clean for the first time in days.
After he washed, he put his slacks back on and went into the house.
"The bedroom's in there," Jenny said somberly, and pointed with a long, tapered finger. Her hands were hard from work, but not unappealing; they were still thoroughly feminine hands, he noted.
He threw his clothes tiredly onto a wicker chair, crawled under the covers, and fell asleep instantly. His breathing was deep, even, and as tired as he was, lately the clean southwestern night air had been reviving him.
He wondered if there was enough junk inside him to pollute the state of New Mexico.
At three in the morning (although Keith didn't know the time), he awakened to the feel of Jenny's body. It was firm, warm and frantic. Opening his eyes, he stared into pitch darkness. Her fingers traced his face, touching the corners of his eyes.
"You'll see tomorrow what you got tonight," she laughed shortly. "You won't be disappointed." Keith tried to picture her without clothes, but his mind was too fatigued: he could remember only the faded, hip-hugging Levi's and oversized man's shirt. And, the braided hair, which was unbraided now, hanging long and loose and thickly around her face. And the good breasts.
Her breasts were hard.
They pushed against his chest like two marble-smooth, body-warm morsels. Something savage in her, something as elemental as the land that kept her alive, excited him. It reawakened the desire in him. She was a different kind of woman from Sally, from Marge, from any of them. Jenny was the closest thing to nature he'd ever gone to bed with; his aesthetic curiosity was revived, and it blended inextricably with his more basic, male desire.
She touched him.
His lips brushed the hard, rough-hewn nipple of her turgid breast, and she stirred, hissing sharply between her teeth and rubbing his close-cropped hair with her fingers. His hands swept over her, and she squirmed wherever he touched.
She was his kind of Indian.
Jay Hawkes was not.
But Jay, at this moment, loomed highly unimportant, as Keith took Jenny in his arms, trapped her nipple between his lips and pressed his muscular body against her.
"Wow," she breathed into his ear. Her tongue flicked inside, and her teeth bit at his lobe. He trembled against her, felt himself rising to the occasion of satisfying her quivering flesh -- showered her with kisses and caresses until her mouth worked loosely and limply, emitting gasping sighs and hoarse moans of pleasure. She was everywhere, it seemed. Thrashing against him, away from him, driving him from one side of the bed to the other, a flurry of limbs and body on fire with thirst and burning.
"We were taught that a man's pleasure is the most important," she said huskily. He wanted to say, "No, our pleasure, it has to be mutual," but she was away from him, her lips traveling lower and lower down his nerve and muscle-covered frame, making him quiver and shake. They were warm, moist lips -- hungry searching, sensuously wide ribbons of flesh seeking the taste of blood of his body. Keith lay there on his back, while her lips pleasure-danced all over him, and finally, after calculating torment -- Found him.
His body lunged into action against her hungry, delight-giving mouth, and she moaned audibly from beneath the blankets. He felt warm inside. Blood flowed hotly through his veins, and he tried to push her away, but she clung to him with her hands and lips, her head bobbing against the covers.
Jenny's hands caressed and massaged, attuned to the rhythm of her lips, and Keith lay open-mouthed and gasping, startled by his capabilities for experiencing such intense pleasure.
Instinctively, Jenny pulled away, and lay beside him, gasping. He quivered beside her.
"Now you're ready," she said thickly.
Keith couldn't talk.
He calmed down somewhat, into less intense passion, and reached for her. Laughing, she snuggled into him and said, "This has gotta be good, Keith, it's gotta make tip for three months. Think you're man enough?"
It came as a challenge.
Every fiber of his being said Hell, yes, I'm man enough, and he thrust himself against her with renewed force, kissing her shoulders, her ear, the base of her neck. She smelled good beside him -- unperfumed, musky, sweet with night air from outside, in the hills. It was good, clean desire that flowed inside him.
Her knee pressed gently between his legs, working upward against him. His hand ran along the length of her thigh: tight-fleshed, smooth, and strongly padded. Thoroughly female. Up, up, his hand moved, until he found the hungry center of her.
Jenny went wild.
Her teeth sank painfully into him, and her body lurched into piston-like movements, precisely frantic, and he went on with his primeval search, listening to the sounds she made.
Ah, yes, she seemed to sigh with her body, with every ounce of herself. Ah, yes. They broke their embrace, and lay on their backs, next to one another.
Out there in the dark, they touched one another lightly, teasingly gentle, moving their fingers up and down each other's seething bodies, from one secret, hot place to another. They moaned, filled with the impulse to fall into one another's arms and legs, mesh irrevocably into the embrace that would catapult them to their release -- but there was something painfully fun about this teasing, this encouraging, this pushing away and denying. Something self-denying, perhaps.
He feathered her breasts with his fingertips, while she grasped him with a strong, yet gentle hand.
"You're big," she said breathily. "You're lush," he replied.
In the dark, they described one another to one another, and the verbal love-play excited them to even greater heights. Keith let his fingers make an imaginary circle around her stomach, moved them down onto the silky gateway, and her body once more lurched upward from the mattress, and hit it with a heavy, limp thud. Up and down she moved, to the tempo of his seeking hand, until she turned on her side and faced him.
"Now," she said. It was a bare croak. When he took her, she sank her teeth deeply into his shoulder and held on doggedly while she drove against him as hard as he strained against her, and their bodies rotated from side to side, lost in their own crazy movements. They were like twin gears who knew their function perfectly.
He heard the sound of their stomachs smacking together -- felt the swell of her hips and thighs with his hands, until she clutched at them, pulled them beneath her, a mute plea to hold her buttocks so she could get closer to her burning source of pleasure. They were massive, sphere-shaped beauties, that trembled with a separate movement in his outstretched hands. Her breasts dug into his chest, and their lips cried mutely against one another's -- he nipped at her lower lip until he tasted blood and sucked at it until she cried with pleasure and pain. The mattress groaned beneath them. Now her arms were stretched stiffly behind her, hands clutching at the old, upright bedposts, her back arched, breasts upthrust against his heaving chest. Her thighs gripped his sides with a deathlike grip, and he held her buttocks up, way up, far away from the mattress, while she shouted encouragement and heaved against him, choking on her own sobs.
She collapsed, all at once.
Every ounce of joy bubbled out of her, and she just went limp beneath him, dragging them both down, and Keith, for the first time in months, knew what it was like to be just plain pleasantly tired -- not nerve-tired, tension-beat, but physically, lots-of-exercise-tired.
They fell asleep in one another's arms.
* * *
Whether or not Larson was dead was anyone's guess, but he decidedly hadn't been found. So Frick discovered when he stepped off the plane at Albuquerque, and into the commissioner's private car. Across the field, the heat closed in on him, threatening to choke him. He climbed into the back seat with the commissioner, and the driver, a uniformed trooper, took off. The car was air-conditioned -- one of the blessings of being a Commissioner of State Police in New Mexico, one that Frick was damned grateful for.
"No, we haven't caught your man yet, Frick," the commissioner was saying, "but if he went where we think, you can be damned sure he isn't making much headway. He'll be dead."
"Not a trace? Not even a hint to where he might be?" Frick asked anxiously.
"None. Our helicopters have been combing the country for more than two days -- not even a patch of vultures to lead us to his bones."
"Think, Commissioner: is there any place where Larson might find shelter around there? A cabin, a shack, a gas station---a cave?"
"Caves, yes. Lots of them -- but it's a long way through those hills until you get to the mountains; and there isn't much water before then. A man has to know where to find it, and even then, the hole's as liable to be dry as not. It's not paradise, Lieutenant, not by a damned country mile."
"Well, I have to find him, regardless of the shape he's in," Frick said through tight lips.
"We'll keep looking, Frick. Meanwhile, you'd better chuck those city clothes and get yourself some khakis -- and a hat."
Frick found it hard to believe that he wasn't talking about a safari or expedition into the unknown.
They drove to the State Police barracks at the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains. They began at the very base of the hills.
Getting out of the car, Frick and the commissioner stepped into the New Mexican hell of sunlight and dry heat. The commissioner pointed upward with an arched finger.
"He's somewhere in there, Frick. Somewhere. It could be years before you found him."
While they stood out there, looking into the hills, a helicopter began to descend. The commissioner looked at the number painted on its side, and nodded.
"Roper -- he's been out there all day." They watched the chopper land, its blades slowing down, and finally stopping. A tall, lanky, dry-skinned, rawboned trooper jumped down from the cockpit and came walking slowly.
"Nothing," he said. "Only thing I saw was a tiny little house, stuck way up there. I didn't have a warrant or any extra men, so I passed over without landing."
"Could he be in there, Roper?"
"I doubt it, sir. I don't see how in hell he could make it that far up on foot. It's a good thirty miles from here, right through the roughest part of the slopes."
"A man running for his life can do things you and I could never do," the commissioner said. "Tomorrow, take three choppers, two men to each, and land."
"Yes, sir."
"Suppose he saw the chopper and decides to run during the night?" Frick asked with alarm.
The commissioner snorted.
"Only a fool walks out there at night, Frick, and Larson is obviously no fool. He made it here from New York, right through nets and roadblocks and every other thing. No, he's no fool -- why did he kill his wife?"
"Jealousy, as far as we can tell. Either she was, or he thought she was, seeing another guy." The commissioner nodded.
"Too bad. I read that book by Hawkes, where Larson did all the illustrations. Fine talent."
"He's a murderer," Frick said. They walked into the barracks building, which bristled with air conditioners stuck in the windows. Frick followed his host to the back, which turned out to be a relief room, with cots, a soft drink and cigarette machine.
The commissioner stuck coins into the machine and pulled out two bottles of soda pop. He handed one to Frick.
"Thanks."
"Tomorrow, we'll be two of the six men to go in the choppers; there'll be several cars as far as they can go -- about four miles from that cabin Roper spotted today."
Frick lit a cigarette, and listened. There were times when he talked, and times when he just listened. That was the time to listen.
"Tonight, go into Henley's General Store and buy yourself some duds and a good pair of hiking boots -- and a good, wide-brimmed bat. I'll give you a canteen in the morning."
Frick nodded.
That night, after he'd bought the things he was told to buy, he lay restlessly in one of the cots, and wondered if Larson were actually in the cabin the trooper had observed from the helicopter. If he were, they'd have him. He could never make it on foot, not in that hellish country. And he probably wasn't armed, in spite of the tabloid coverage he'd gotten in the papers. Deep down in his policeman's heart, Frick knew he wasn't chasing a criminal, probably not even a demented personality, given that Larson was still alive. No, lots of nice guys like Larson had blown their rationales just long enough to commit the ultimate crime, and thereby step outside the confines of the law. It was too bad. Everything he'd heard and read about Larson pointed to the probability of his being a nice soul. But he wasn't after anybody's soul -- just his physical being. The rest was up to judge, jury and God.
How had he made it so far? It wasn't that he was exceedingly clever. Luck, incompetence on the authorities part, blind will to survive. Those factors, and others. Frick never ceased wondering at the human capacity to hold onto life. When that was at stake, a man went through hell to hold on to it, he decided. It went on every day, all over the world. You'd think everyone knew about it -- but, sadly, no one ever did, until it was their life and their will to preserve it, whatever its potential worth to society.
Stop being philosophical, Frick, he told himself. Get some sleep for tomorrow. And, with a cop's unconscious self-discipline, Frick went to sleep.
* * *
It wasn't until he started losing his equipment that Keith Larson became truly desperate. A certain brush missing, a canvas somewhere other than he'd remember putting it -- he began to feel lost in the very place he knew best, his own studio.
And here, he was alone.
Marge wouldn't know where I put brushes and canvases, he told himself. I'm cracking up! And so it went, getting progressively worse, until he spent half his time looking for things that had always had a specific place.
And it didn't stop there.
Sometimes he would lose a drawing. Then he would go into a tizzy, and storm through the apartment, turning furniture and anything that stood in his path upside down, screaming Marge, do you know where in hell I put that drawing?
What drawing, darling?
The one -- and for a moment he groped for the word, the description of what he was looking for -- of those conquistadores?
What'd it look like?
Goddamnit, like conquistadores I he exploded, and would have torn the entire apartment asunder, if Marge hadn't stopped him and calmed him down.
He was getting maniacal. Insane.
Keith sat down in a chair, and went limp. He stared blankly into space, wondering why it was happening to him, what had happened to bring him to this. Then Marge would bring him a cup of coffee (maybe I've been drinking too much coffee), and smile gently. So gently, so patiently, he thought. Thank God for Marge -- "I'm going to a doctor, Marge," he announced one morning. It was at breakfast, which consisted of coffee -- he still had no appetite -- "I can't handle it any more."
"Shall I make an appointment for you, darling?"
"I wish you would."
Two days later, he went. First, for a physical, which consisted of probing, tapping, kneading, and shining lights in every orifice of his tired body.
Conclusion: "You are just plain run down, Keith. Quit working altogether for a while and go away. Take your wife somewhere where you can be alone."
"How long, doctor?"
"The longer the better." Definite, Keith thought testily, real definite. "You're exhausted. Go somewhere clean and fresh and isolated; you'll start eating, and you'll sleep better. And," by way of addition, "you and your wife'll get to know each other all over again. Be great for the two of you." He went home and told Marge the verdict.
"Well, why don't we?" she wanted to know. "You have no pressing assignments, and Jay's book can wait indefinitely -- so, why not? Where can we go?"
They talked about it. Europe? Which countries? South America? Where? The Islands? The U.S.? It became clear that they didn't agree; their ideas on paradise were too far removed from one another's and as a result, they didn't go at all. And as a net result of that, Keith wandered around the house, trying to refrain from the work he knew awaited him in that studio that had become a jungle for him, getting more and more edgy.
And there was Jay, still dropping by, smiling, being the great companion, the bolsterer of family morale.
Up to now, Keith was certain that he was cracking up, solely because of the gods, the chips, whatever you want to call it. But something happened one morning to plant the first suspicious seeds in his breast. He saw Marge making coffee in the kitchen. She poured from the pot into two cups, and added something to one of the cups, from a bottle. A small bottle, with tiny white capsules -- her back was turned to him, and she didn't see him standing in the doorway behind her.
She didn't jump, didn't seem the least bit alarmed.
"Good morning, dear."
"What'd you put in the coffee just now?" he wanted to know. Marge felt the suspiciousness, the hostility in his words, saw it in his taut face.
"Here," and she handed the bottle to him. Saccharin-- quarter grain, for those who must restrict their intake of natural sweets. Calorie and energy-free.
As innocuous as all that.
I am cracking up, he thought, desperately. What was it, delusions of persecution? First symptoms of psychosis?
"I want to lose three pounds or so," Marge said, "it's starting to creep up on me."
"Oh." What could he say? He felt like a fool, an ass. Saccharin, for God's sake! And he'd thought -- What?
That she was trying to poison him? Drugging him?
"Sit down, darling, have your coffee." Numb, he sat down and stared into the cup she placed in front of him. For a long while, he didn't pick it up. He just stared. "Keith, are you all right?"
"Yeah, yeah."
He picked it up, and drank. Today, he was going to do some work, regardless of what the doctor, Marge, or anyone else said, he decided. If she didn't want to go away, then he was going to get something done -- he wasn't about to sit on his rear end and drive himself insane.
"I'm going to do some work," he announced.
"But the doctor said not to -- "
"The hell with the doctor, and the hell with you!" he stormed. "You don't want to go away, I'm not gonna sit around here and go more nuts than I already am!"
He left the kitchen in a huff, and went through the living room and down the hall to the studio, where he hadn't been for days.
All the drawings were missing.
"Now goddamnit, I left 'em right here. I know I did," he said aloud. "They were right here!" He smashed his fist on the bare spot of table where those drawings had been the week before -- all his roughs that he couldn't go on working without. He gritted his teeth and told himself Patience, man, patience, don't blow your stack, and his resolution lasted for all of five minutes.
Ten minutes after that, he'd torn his studio apart.
He sat down on the floor and cried, with his head in his hands: that was how Marge found him.
The next two days were spent in bed, at Marge's firm insistence.
At the end of the week, he left the bed and walked around the apartment, pacing back and forth from one room to the next like a caged animal.
Instead of being passive, he began snapping at Marge. His frustration had reached a peak, and he vented it on the nearest living object. Marge bore it patiently for a while, but soon her temper began to fray -- and soon they were at it constantly.
Quarrel and make up.
Make up and quarrel again. It was a vicious, endless pattern, unrelieved by nothing but sleep and Jay's visits.
Jay, with his smile, his good humor, his easy conversation, injected some pleasantry into their lives, and Keith was more glad than ever before that Marge had someone to talk to after he went to bed. Hell, it's tough on her too, he reasoned.
At times, he envied Jay, even resented him, but he struggled to crush that feeling. Jay was everything he had once been, and was no more -- perhaps would never be again. The picture of health. Young. Vibrant, full of life. All those qualities seemed like irretrievable dreams to Keith, and Jay's presence seemed to rub it in harshly. But he crushed it as best he could. He owed a lot to Jay, and he was a good friend. He was good for Marge. When the resentment flooded through him, he sank into morose silence, and half-listened to the conversation around him. Otherwise, he dozed, awakening at times, and some of those times imagining that Jay and Marge exchanged long, passionate looks -- This morning was going to be different, he decided.
Maybe it would be better, maybe worse -- but decidedly different. The unending pace of events was getting to him more than anything else. He would change his routine, his habits. "Coffee, darling?"
"No thanks. I'm not going to drink it today."
"But you always drink coffee. You practically live on it."
"But it doesn't keep me awake -- it makes me tired, for some reason. No, not today. How about a glass of milk instead?"
Marge shrugged.
"Okay." She poured him a glass of milk, and the taste almost floored him. It'd been so long since he'd had a glass of cold, pure uncut milk. He had another glass, and asked for some eggs and toast besides, which, even though he didn't want them, he forced himself to eat. By God, he thought, today's going to be different if I have to turn my whole way of living upside down -- and Marge stood by, apparently perplexed.
"Are you going to work today?" she asked him.
"Nope. I'm going out -- downtown. Way downtown, and I'm just going to wander around. I've been shut up too damned long."
And, he went out.
"What about lunch?" she asked, just as he was ready to close the door. "I'll have it out."
"But when do you think you'll be back?"
"Goddamn, will you leave me be? How often do I just go out for the hell of going out?" He slammed the door hard, very hard, and for a moment, felt better. Purgation. Release. He decided to keep it up, and kicked a wall, punched the elevator button, and cursed as loudly as he could possibly get away with.
By the time he hit the street, he felt better.
It'd been so long since he'd gone off on his own, just browsing around, ducking in and out of bookstores and record shops and other places that interested him. In spite of the freedom, he felt stifled -- the depression was returning as he thought of Marge and his health and his increasing hallucinations. I'm lucid now, he told himself; I know what's going on. That car's a 1965 Buick, red windows closed, all tinted -- driver's a man about forty -- He observed things closely, with a radically empirical eye, just to prove to himself that he was oriented.
If I think about insanity, maybe I'm okay, he thought.
Remorse came over him. He remembered how he'd left Marge, yelling and cursing. The poor kid was probably torn with grief. Why didn't he call her? He went into a drug store, found a phone booth, stepped in and dialed the number.
The phone rang.
It rang several times.
Probably went out herself, he thought -- but let it ring a few more times, then a few more, afraid to let go and hang up, afraid of the prospect (why?) that his wife might not be home. Finally, with a sigh, he gave it up. When he walked out of the store, he felt worse than ever.
* * *
Jay Hawkes had moved out of his Village apartment long ago; to be precise, after the sale of his first novel. Now he lived on the fourteenth floor of a new apartment building overlooking Central Park South. From there, he could see the city -- the city he had always wanted to be a part of: the rich part, the luxurious part -- he no longer thought of North Carolina, his birthplace. He had forced it out of his memory, had repudiated his family, his total past.
Now he was looking down, not up.
And to Jay Hawkes, that was important.
Today, though, he was not looking out of his window. The view inside was infinitely better than "he view outside.
"Is your drink all right?" he asked Marge. She sat on his new couch, wearing a clinging, simple black dress that did wonders for her.
She nodded.
"I really shouldn't have come here, Jay. Keith might come home any time -- he left arguing, and he might have tried to call me."
"You're not entitled to go out for a few hour.;: " Jay asked irritably. "Hell, you're a grown woman. I'm sure he's not as shook up as you think."
"Still -- " He silenced her with a kiss, bending downward to reach her lips with his.
"It's working like a charm, baby, like a charm." He straightened again, and his eyes went gleamingly savage, as they looked into hers. "But not fast enough."
"It takes time," Marge protested, "I'm doing the best I can."
"I know, I know," he snapped. Then he was pacing across the room like a restless animal. "But," he said, slapping his hard, lean hips with broad hands, "do you love me?"
"Yes," she said, her voice a soft, strong whisper. "You know I do, darling."
"Okay. It's got to be quicker. We can't go on dragging it out."
"Jay, I'm afraid."
"Listen to me. He's been to the doctor. Everybody knows he hasn't been well, that he's depressed, brooding-- right? Okay. We're going to pull a slight switch."
"Jay -- "
"Listen to me, Marge!" he exploded angrily. "One night I'll come over, like always. We'll drink it up, have a ball, and you'll let him drink this time, as much as he wants. Slip one of these into a drink, and hell probably have a heart attack." He handed her a bottle.
Without looking at the contents, she blurted, "Jay!" Her voice was shocked, disbelieving.
"You're killing him slowly, now; all I'm doing is making it faster."
She was silent for a long time; he watched her tremble, her face contorting with the agony of decision.
"What are they?" she finally asked.
"Benzedrene. Fifteen grains: stimulant. Mix it with enough depressant like liquor, and a guy in his health'll keel right over. Accident -- suicide. Well cry like babies."
"I can't do it, Jay." Marge dropped the bottle on the rug and turned away from it.
He grabbed her arm.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes, you know I do, but -- "
"Do you want to go on seeing each other?"
"Yes." A barely audible whisper.
"I'm not about to go on playing second string, baby -- you married him, you found me afterward, but I don't care. I want you all to myself."
"But if I could just ask him for a divorce!" she wailed.
"Ask him for his resignation from life. That's how fast you'll get a divorce from him. The jerk loves you."
Jay could be incredibly cruel, she thought, as she looked at the bottle of pills lying on the rug where she'd dropped them. She looked at it for a long time. Jay stood erect in front of her, and looked from the bottle to her.
Marge was conscious of his glaring at her, waiting, demanding; a sinking sensation started in her stomach.
Murder, she thought; it's murder, but what am I doing now but killing him slowly, by degrees, killing his mind, deadening his body?
But murder -- like this -- ? She looked at Jay.
He looked at her, and still didn't make a move. Finally, with a slow, tired motion, as though she were on the brink of exhaustion, she bent over and picked up the pills, and put them in her purse.
Jay leaned over and kissed her warmly on the mouth; she felt his hot, heavy breath against her skin.
"Don't lose them," he said, "and don't let them be found."
"No," she heard herself say. She struggled to forget about what was real, what was happening and what was going to happen, by losing herself in her lover's kisses and embraces. Groaning, she fell back upon the couch with him, and let him undress her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jenny stirred in her sleep, opened her eyes and looked at Keith, who was buried in dead sleep -- it had been another night of wild lovemaking, but nevertheless, looking at him, the blood coursed through her veins again. He might be grumpy, she thought -- but quickly discarded the notion, decided to awaken him as pleasantly as possible.
She kissed his bare back, let her lips travel up and down its ridges in a more or less haphazard pattern, while her fingertips brushed his thighs in anything but a haphazard, meandering way. Keith smiled in his sleep.
He'd made love to Jenny all night; in his sleep-drugged mind, he recalled the first morning, upon seeing her for the first time without clothes, after enjoying her body and passion throughout the night. You'll see tomorrow what you got tonight, she'd laughingly promised, and sure as hell, he had.
It was a lot.
He'd hardly recognized her: black, luxuriant hair hanging freely around her high-cheekboned face; firm, upswinging breasts with somber, ruby-hued nipples: taut stomach, nipped into a slender dimension; flared hips -- and the legs! What legs, he thought. Long and strong and trained to do things that no other woman's ever had been, not in his experience.
Yes, she'd been a lot.
He'd stayed in the cabin all day, never going outside except to relieve himself or to sit on the sheltered porch, while Jenny went scrounging and foraging out of sight, somewhere. It was a mystery to him as to her specific whereabouts or activities, but he didn't worry about her. Anyone who could survive in this country hardly warranted concern. And Jenny did more than survive; she thrived.
Now his memories of her body flooded through him, as he lay between unconsciousness and wakefulness, half-dreaming, half-realizing -- he lay in that not quite discernible state of limbo, and thought of her fingertips touching his legs, working around industriously while her warm, full lips kissed his back.
It was a nice dream.
He stirred, mumbled and murmured dreamily, and suddenly snapped his eyes wide open when he felt something touching him. Hell, it's no dream, he realized, she wants to make love again. And with that single realization, he glided out of limbo as he felt her hand possessing him and stirring him into readiness. He turned over slowly, and his eyes met hers, which were smiling dreamily, heavy and smoky with early-morning lust.
"You're stronger than I thought," she murmured, and tightened her grip on him to emphasize her point. It became glaringly clear as to what she alluded. He leaned closer and kissed her breasts -- one was accessible, lying there like ripe, firmed fruit, while the other one lay half-hidden by her arm under her side. He reached for that one too, and she felt his tongue probing and scorching her sleep-drenched flesh. A rising moan escaped her lips. His hand nestled between her legs and moved upward. Slowly, she parted them. Hot flashes of wakefulness shot through her when his fingers touched her -- Playfully, sleepily, she nipped at has ear while his fingers busied themselves, stirring her hunger into ravenous gluttony, turned on a switch somewhere in her body, making it move against his with insistent, throbbing precision. She closed her eyes, let him love her leisurely, and relaxed herself so that the sensations could be savored and cherished. His lips moved over her flesh like live, crawling, hot ribbons, and as his hands paid tribute to her limbs, her only coherent thought was that it was a helluva fine way to wake up in the morning.
But then something happened. The easy, leisurely rhythm snapped, and accelerated inside her, as his lips moved down, down, burnishing her moistened thighs.
"Ooh!" she moaned, and yes, it was happening, he was kissing her, giving her the ultimate kiss a man could give a woman, and the rhythm flowed liquidly through her as her hips rose off the bed to meet the worshiping lips that filled her with fire! His hands cupped her buttocks. Her long, suddenly heavy-weighted legs dangled over his shoulders while her arms stretched behind her, her fingers dug deliriously into the mattress -- and she did a lust-dance that moved her body up and down and side to side, as though little devils gnawed at her innards.
His teeth sank into her buttocks. She made a yip-ping sound and sought his head with her hands, but he was already giving her the kiss again, and she forced herself to relax into it, to ride with the tempo that pounded in her -- and the release that finally came was a shuddering, thunderous event, that made her quiver for many moments after it was over and then in blind, incredulous memory.
"Take me!" Her voice grated in his ear, and she lay where she was, while Keith moved forward. Her ankles scraped his neck -- his hands clung to her buttocks, and he moved down, down, and her ankles beat the sides of his neck spasmodic, reflexive motions.
He searched the depths of her, and she cried. She cried with pleasures undreamed-of: she could feel him everywhere, probing the length of her body -- she was completely overcome by Man. There had never been anything like it for her. And, he moved slowly -- so slowly!
"Ahh!" she gasped. She choked on pleasure. Her feet rolled off, and she clasped him between her thighs, moved them slowly, carefully beneath him -- And closed her legs tightly.
Keith howled with pleasure, and their engines speeded up until they drove at one another with bull like fury. She pressed him, held him, and it was an incredibly delicious trap to be in -- a vise of woman's flesh.
She cried into his shoulder, tore at his hair with her hands while he pinched and bit back, their bodies never missing a beat, and it ended violently, cursingly, in tears born of unbelieving pleasure. They lay together, panting.
"Good morning," she breathed. "Morning."
It promised to be a fine day, a perfect day. Keith stretched luxuriously and swung his feet over the edge of the bed.
"What a way to wake up in the morning," he sighed. "If you stayed here, it could be like that all the time," she answered softly.
For a moment, his eyes became serious, as they looked into hers.
"I can never pay you back for what you've done, Jenny. But I can't stay here forever -- they'll find me here sooner or later, then you'll be in trouble."
"No read papers," she mimicked. "No get into town much."
Keith laughed.
"I'll stay here as long as it's safe," he said. "But I wish I could do something to earn my keep -- you have enough trouble feeding yourself, let alone two of us."
"Okay, tell you what, you want to earn your keep. You ever see those trees about a hundred yards on the east side of the house?" Keith wasn't sure for a moment -- but then oriented himself -- he was becoming a master at direction-finding these days -- and nodded. Yeah. The trees with their underbrush choking at the bottoms. Sure, now he remembered.
"Uh-huh."
"There's a stream on the other side, loaded with trout -- think you could catch us some? I've got the equipment."
"Sure."
"Okay. That's what you do today. Only be careful. If you hear someone coming, and no whistle, hide. If it's me, I'll whistle like this -- " she made a trilling, vibrant sound between her lips. "Nobody else can whistle like that unless it's a Navajo."
They ate tuna fish and toast for breakfast, and drank several cups of coffee apiece. Then Jenny showed Keith where all the tackle was.
"Use the flies," she said. "Those damned trout don't know about live bait -- people don't come up here to spoil them. It's my stream."
Keith left the house, feeling fine. Today he was going to do something relevant, purposeful. He was going fishing, which was certainly no chore. How many executives hired private bush planes and all that just to find the isolated spot somewhere in Canada. And here he was, in the New Mexican hills where most people, including himself, would never have dreamed that a trout stream existed.
He rigged the fly, and walked slowly into the stream, which ran rapidly south. The water was icy cold around his bare feet, and the pebbled bottom hurt them for a few minutes -- Jenny had no wading boots. He was careful to stay in the shadows, so as not to scare the fish away. He made his first cast, a jerky, short one, upstream, toward the opposite bank near some reeds, where trout are known to linger. Immediately, he had a strike. The fish broke water, snatched the fly between his strong jaws, and Keith jerked the rod to set the hook. The fish thrashed, leaped wildly, tried to hang the line up on a rock, but it was all coming back to Keith now. He played the fish away from the rocks and pulled him into clear water. The fish fought less and less, and finally tired himself out. Keith reeled him in, netted him and took the fly out of his mouth, then and put the fish in the basket strapped around his chest. Hell, this was sport.
A great way to spend a beautiful day, under these trees in the shade, up to your knees in cool, clear water that ran fast around you. The air was painfully clean. He became enraptured by the beauty of his surroundings, the possibility of this kind of life where you didn't worry about money or a wife trying to kill you, none of those hangups born of civilized living.
But he was torn out of his reverie by sounds.
Strange, unidentifiable sounds, at first.
Whirring, insect sounds, but the insects got to sound more and more like machinery of some sort, and he looked quickly around him, and was relieved to hear Jenny whistling as she came crashing through the brush.
"You hear the helicopters?" she asked, out of breath. "They circled the house and they're gonna land. You'll have to hide."
"Where?"
"Follow me, quick." He dogged behind her as she ran easily through the trees and up a bare, rocky slope. It turned out to be a cave. She stood at the edge of it and handed him a pack of matches.
"Just crawl in. If things get hot, there's an entrance that veers off to your left -- just run straight out of it, and you'll be heading west." During a seemingly endless moment, when those damned choppers were getting louder, coming closer to the ground, Keith and Jenny looked at each other.
"I hope they don't find you," she said, "I want you to stay here for a long time. Forever." Before he could say anything, she was running down the rock slope, and was out of sight. He crawled inside the cave, and hit a rock that made him trip. Cursing, he fumbled for the matches she'd given him, and lit one. He crawled forward slowly, lighting one match after another, until he found the entrance to the left. He stayed there, ready to remain or take the tunnel out, poised tensely, waiting, casting his eyes around in the dark. Cold, clammy sensations crept up and down his spine and made his flesh crawl. He had almost forgotten the feeling of being hunted by other men, but it was coming back fast _now, that terror-ridden, impotent feeling. You were essentially helpless unless you clung to your reason. As soon as that was lost, the game was up, because those bastards hunting you were using their reason, and their resources and experience. They were trained hunters. And Keith knew he was not a trained runner -- he never would be.
He waited, holding his breath in the dark cave.
The chopper landed with a jolt, and Frick felt his breakfast threaten to come up -- which would have been embarrassing. He swallowed hard, and set his jaw. On either side of them, the two other choppers had landed, and four miles away, at the end of the dirt road, were cars -- a lot of good they could do, four miles away, he thought ruefully.
"Let's go, Lieutenant," the trooper said to him, and the two of them swung their bodies out of the cabin and onto the ground below. The six of them, all armed, guns drawn, advanced toward the cabin. Four troopers flanked off and ducked behind rocks and trees, and cocked their rifles. One of them carried an extra shotgun, another a tear-gas launcher. If Larson were inside that cabin, he didn't have a chance, Frick thought with satisfaction. There was no chivalry in being a cop; you had to, by necessity, renounce a certain amount of your humanity and sense of fair play.
"Larson!" he called out. "If you're in there, you'd better come out!"
Suddenly the door was flung open, and Frick heard rifles being raised, ready to fire.
A woman came out, holding an over-and-under shotgun, looking madder than all hell.
"What in hell do you want?" Jenny stormed. "Git off my land before I start shooting!" She closed the breech menacingly, and the commissioner stood up.
"Ma'am, we're police officers, looking for an escaped murderer. We have reason to believe he's in the area -- we're sorry for the intrusion. Have you seen any strangers recently?"
"Nope. I never see nobody around here. That's why I like it here," she said nastily.
"We have a search warrant. I'm afraid we have to search your house. We'll be as quick as we can, and we'd appreciate your cooperation."
"A search warrant!" Jenny lowered her gun, looking at the nestled helicopters and the troopers who were standing now, rifles resting at their sides -- "Okay," she sighed, "come on. But you won't find a damn thing."
"Is she an Indian?" Frick asked the commissioner. "Yep. Navajo. Every now and then you find one loning it -- but not often. They usually stick together."
Frick followed the others into the house, which turned out to be a cabin in actuality. His eyes combed the room methodically, but saw nothing. He went into the kitchen and saw nothing but a mess. Dishes piled around, the smell of -- yeah, tuna fish, and -- Two empty cups sitting on the table. Two cups, one opposite the other, in front of crates that were obviously used as chairs. Both were set out from the table, turned haphazardly. Frick looked around some more, and saw two different kinds of cigarette butts in the ash tray; one a roll-your-own, the other a Lark. The woman had had company, and damned recently, because those butts still stank.
He went into the other room. The commissioner had been in the bedroom.
"Thank you, ma'am," the commissioner said to Jenny. "We appreciate your cooperation, and we're honestly sorry for the inconvenience." They went outside.
"What'd you find?" the commissioner asked Frick.
"Two different kinds of cigarette butts, recently smoked, and two coffee cups."
"I found cigarette butts in the bedroom. I also found these." He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket. Attached to the chain was a miniature locket, with a woman's picture inside. Marge Larson's.
"Where do we look first?"
"Around here, it doesn't matter. One place is as good as another. There're six of us; we'll split the men up and spread out."
Frick nodded.
Excitement began to trickle in him. He was close, very close; somewhere in this general area, Larson was either running or hiding, maybe even listening to every word they had to say.
"I wish we had dogs," he said aloud.
"We use hounds trained by a couple of loners, but they're not keen on traveling in choppers," the commissioner said.
"Well, let's start sniffing ourselves," Frick said. They called the men together and told, them Larson was around, and split them up accordingly, sending them into different areas to look, two men to a pair.
"You go with Roper," the commissioner said to Frick. "He knows his way around. I'll go with one of the other men."
Roper was silent as he slithered easily through the clump of trees, while Frick followed him with footsteps marking one unused to the woods and wild, hot country.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Keight had come home less than five minutes after Marge had made it through the door.
"Hi," he said. She waited for him to bring up their abortive parting earlier, but he didn't. "Have a nice day?"
"Fine," she managed to answer. "I tried to call you earlier, but there was no answer."
Marge felt relieved that he'd made that announcement. No chance now of getting caught in a bald-faced lie.
"I did some shopping," she said. "I had to get out. "Yeah, it's good to get out once in a while, by yourself. I feel quite a bit better now."
"I'm glad. You should go out more often." She tried not to look at Keith -- her husband, the man she was going to kill for the sake of another man.
Her lover. His best friend.
The vicious triangle you laughed about all the time and never encountered in actual life, until -- she was encountering it.
"Anything wrong, Marge?" Keith asked.
"No. Not a thing. Why do you ask?"
"You act as though you're upset about something."
"No. I'm tired. I did a lot of walking around."
"Yeah, I feel better than I've felt in a long time," he said. "For a while, it was rocky -- I was beat, depressed, ready to sit down in the middle of the street and let a bus run me over. But now I feel decent." His voice bubbled happily; she could hear the hope in it, the renewed faith, and another pang bordering on horrified panic went through her. He wanted to live, and she didn't -- Jay didn't -- want him to.
I'm going to murder him, she thought, with a sickening sensation starting in the hollow of her stomach. It reached with tiny fingers through her guts, and she set her teeth in determination not to think about it.
"What's for dinner?" Keith asked. "For once, I'm starved."
He is feeling better, she thought. Suppose this doesn't work and he finds out? He might trace it all the way back, and find out what's been happening -- for a single, fragmented moment, Marge allowed herself to explore the possibilities of such a discovery on Keith's part, and what he would do as a result. It made the perspiration break out on her smooth forehead.
"I'll scrounge up something," she said. "I'd forgotten all about dinner, I'm so used to making it for myself."
"I know," he said. "Don't worry, I'm not particular. I could eat a horse tonight."
My God! Maybe he'll want to make love, too.
Keith was feeling much better, no question about it. He was strangely devoid of any of the affects that she had worked so hard to create and maintain. What had happened? It wasn't supposed to work like that -- They ate dinner.
Marge cooked some minute steaks and took biscuits out of the freezer, sliced up an onion and cooked some frozen French fries. She watched Keith eat like a starved horse, as he had promised. He never said a word, just stuffed his mouth with food.
After three sandwiches and most of the French fries, he leaned back from the table, and patted his stomach fondly.
"I haven't felt stuffed in I don't know how long," he sighed. She watched Mm take two cigarettes from the package. He handed her one, lit it, and lit his own. He blew smoke contentedly at the ceiling, and looked at it trailing away, dreamy-eyed.
"How about some coffee?" she asked.
"No thanks. I was drinking way too much of the stuff before. I think it was one of the things that was getting to me."
Of course. That's it. The coffee -- no stimulant working at him, along with the depressant. He's just tranquilized instead of keyed up and beaten down with nervous exhaustion. That explained it, more or less.
Keith went into the living room and pulled a book off the library shelf. At one time, he'd read ravenously, but had stopped completely since his constant, never-ending exhaustion. He looked over the book he'd been wanting to read for so long: a new Mark Twain, recently published, reportedly funny, bawdy and thoroughly entertaining. Now he sat in his reclining chair and opened the book.
Marge finished washing the dishes in the kitchen. It was hell to be alone -- she wished fervently that Jay would come over in a hurry. If she had him to look at, his voice to listen to, she would have more courage. . Come over, hurry, please, she thought wildly. She dried the last dish, and put it away. She strained her ears for a sound, any sound that would offer a clue as to what Keith was doing in the living room. Silence. Then she heard him chuckle, softly at first, until it evolved into a genuine laugh. It ripped through her senses.
When the doorbell buzzer sounded, she leaped to answer it. Thank God, she thought, he's here. Sure enough, it was Jay, his usual easy, grinning self. When Keith saw him, he closed the book and got up out of the chair.
"Hiya, old man! How're you?" The aliveness in his voice was crushingly apparent, but it didn't ruffle Jay, at least not visibly. He strode long-leggedly across the floor and pumped Keith's hand.
"You sound as though you're feeling better," he said.
"I'm revived, man. It started happening this afternoon -- all of a sudden, I just felt better. I ate like a truck driver tonight, and I was just starting to read -- I can't believe it."
"That's great," Jay said, "just great." He handed a bag to Keith. "Let's celebrate." Keith opened the bag and took out the bottle of Chivas. He looked at it doubtfully. Maybe he shouldn't push his luck too far, he thought. He'd been feeling so fine all afternoon.
"Thanks," he said. "I'll make myself a weak one. Excuse me." He started to go into the kitchen with the bottle. Jay looked at Marge frantically, with a savage shake of his head. Marge caught the signal.
"Let me do it, darling. Just sit down and let me tend to those hostessy things."
"Okay, if you want," Keith replied, handing her the bottle. He plunked himself back into the chair and smiled at Jay. "She doesn't let me lift a finger around here," he said proudly.
"A perfect wife," Jay agreed. "Most wives break their husbands' backs with chores, get me this and get me that, and the poor jerk never has a chance to relax his weary bones."
"Yeah, I'm lucky, okay."
"You sure are."
Marge came in balancing three glasses. To Keith, it had seemed like she'd been gone a long time. But the drinks contained crushed ice, and that was probably the reason -- their electric crusher had gone on the blink, and she'd had to wrap the cubes in a dish towel and batter hell out of them with the handle-end of a knife. Primitive and slow.
"Here you are," she said to Keith, handing him a drink.
"Thanks doll." As Marge bent over to hand him the drink, he looked up into her eyes. She smiled quickly, and moved away. Keith was so caught up in his new feelings and sensations, his good health, that he failed to notice the strangeness of her expression. Tonight I'm going to make love to her, he decided. I know that'll make her happy! Yes, he felt fine; strong enough to do anything, anything at all.
He sipped the Scotch and crushed ice -- damn it, it tastes like medicine again, he thought, curling his lips and face wryly. Ugh! Putrid!
He drank it anyway, determined to get used to the taste of good liquor again, to get back into the swing of good living. He'd been living like a divorcee from life for too damned long.
For an hour, he drank exuberantly, laughed at Jay's conversation, smiled at Marge -- and slowly, almost imperceptibly, went pasty-faced and sick-looking.
"Is anything wrong, darling?" Marge asked, getting up out of her chair. Through hazed, blurred impressions, Keith saw her features swim, grow fainter, her nose and eyes and mouth swimming nightmarishly around the circumference of her head.
I should've known better, he thought, and slumped forward, unconscious.
"He's out cold," Jay said, coming forward. Marge stood by, horror-stricken, while he coldly, dispassionately opened Keith's eyes, and put his ear against his heart.
"Still breathing -- damn it."
"What do we do?" she asked despairingly. "Wait for him to go all the way," he said. "You gave him a lot, I hope?"
"Thirty grains."
"Wonderful. Now put that book back on his lap. like he was reading -- or had it there while we talked to him." Marge followed orders, feeling her flesh creep when she put the book against Keith's body, touching him for a brief moment.
"Now, let's go in the bedroom." She looked at Jay in disbelief. How could he? At a moment like this? But his eyes were strangely dark with lust, and he looked at her hungrily. "I'm rampant," he said happily, and grabbed her by the arm. She tripped over her feet as he took her hurriedly into the bedroom, and not so gently, he pushed her down onto the bed and began to undress.
She looked up at him. His body gleamed in the low light of the lamp, as he revealed himself -- all of himself -- and she suddenly went hot and cold with flashes of desire. Somehow, she couldn't explain it, the thought of Keith lying there in the next room, close to death, excited her when she related it to Jay's very alive and eager body standing above her; she smiled, licked her lips, and reached behind her. Her breasts catapulted free as the brassiere relaxed, and Jay's hands were against her blouse, feeling their unhampered movement. His white teeth flashed in the dimness as he savagely ripped the blouse from her, making buttons fly and hit the floor and walls with little clicking noises. She growled low in her throat, attuned to the savagery of the moment, and he flipped her hard over onto her stomach and yanked the skirt away. She felt his hot, trembling hands rustle momentarily against the silk of her panties. She shrugged convulsively, whimpering with anxiety as he ripped those off.
He left the stockings on.
She lay on her stomach, breathing heavily, her buttocks trembling whitely in the closing dusk of the room. He looked at the beige garters that held them up around the lush thighs that sprang downward from the buttocks.
Very hot stuff, he thought.
She felt him against her, the weight of his body pleasantly heavy on hers, his knee forcing her legs apart, his hands maneuvering her around, lifting her around the stomach, pulling her to her knees. She moved, at his insistence, into a position strange to her. Her head rested against the mattress, while her buttocks remained suspended in the air; her knees pressed into the firmness of the mattress, and her arms crossed, pillowlike, where she rested her head.
"Jay-" His nails bit deeply into the firmness of her hips. "Uhh!"
"Jay! Oh Jay!" Marge's eyes popped open incredulously as he meshed with her, his hard, knotted stomach pushing powerfully against her buttocks, his hands clasping her thighs, then returning to her hips. He lunged slowly at her, and she lunged back, gasping and sobbing and struggling for balance. Her head was hot and light, and she was dizzy, tingling with feverish desire. The bed groaned, and their voices made animal sounds in the dark. It was dark in every corner of the room except for where the night light was, and it cast a shadow over their bodies -- presenting two grotesque figures, blatantly male and female, engaged in exaggerated expressions of lovemaking. She felt him deeply.
With arched back, she thrust back at him, and they made their movements terrifyingly slow, until the passion and hot desire washed over them and through them like a molten tidal wave and carried them into a fever pitch of motion, moving faster and faster and faster until Marge collapsed with relief beneath him and he fell on top of her.
And Keith lay out there.
It didn't excite her to think of that any more.
"We have one sweet life ahead of us, baby," Jay sighed.
She was silent.
"What's the matter?" he asked accusingly. "I'm exhausted," she sighed, trying to push the thought of what lay in the next room out of her mind. "Well, it's over. Now we just wait."
"And then?"
"Call an ambulance. We're amateurs -- gotta make sure he's dead."
"And they'll make an autopsy and find what's in him."
"Depressed -- behaving strangely -- in fact, put the pills in his night table now."
"I can't go out there," she shuddered.
"Hell, I'll go then," he said impatiently, and she watched his lean, lithe body go out of the room. He came back and put the pills inside Keith's night table.
"He's still breathing."
"Let's not talk about it," she sobbed.
"Lord, you really are shook up, aren't you? Tell you what. Let's get dressed and go out -- go to the Stage and have a pastrami, maybe see a late movie. Then we'll come back."
It was escape.
"Yes," Marge breathed, "I think that's a good idea." They dressed, and Marge thought they did it with amazing casualness, as though there were no novelty in the two of them being like this. Maybe that's because it was meant to be, she told herself over and over.
They walked past Keith, lying in the chair, the book in his lap. Marge averted her head as though she had seen a snake, and Jay quietly held the door for her.
They ate, and saw a movie that she barely watched at all. But Jay seemed intently interested. She marveled at Jay's ability to remain calm and collected; perhaps that's the difference between a man and a woman, she decided. Certainly Jay's not inhuman! She vetoed the possibility that he might be just that.
CHAPTER NINE
He had no idea how long he was inside the cave.
Although it seemed like hours to Keith, it could have been less -- all he knew for sure was that he was sick of the damp, clammy air in the place, of sitting on cold ground. And he was torn between decisions: whether to remain here indefinitely, or risk going out of the emergency exit that Jenny had told him about.
Countless times, he imagined he heard sounds.
He strained his eyes in the darkness, tempted to light another match, but restrained himself; there weren't that many left, and he might need them later. So, he saved them. He waited, while the dampness from the ground seeped into his joints.
The time dragged on.
If he could just sleep -- not because he was tired, but it would kill time, take some of the agony out of waiting. If they were certain he was in the area, they would search indefinitely -- until they found him. If necessary, they would bring dogs and track him down. Exasperated, Keith crawled toward the other exit, wondering how far it led from the area. Maybe he would emerge right smack in the middle of furious searching above, and fall into the arms of some searching trooper. His patience was at an end. He had to move, do something positive. Waiting was not his best game.
Halfway down the other tunnel, he heard a voice. He stopped. Listened, straining his ears. "There's a cave here!" the voice echoed and reverberated. "He could be in here!" Then, dully, distantly, came the sounds of other footsteps, moving at a dead run. They'd found the cave. He backtracked to the junction, and peeked around the corner... a bright white beam flashed straight ahead, sweeping the innards of the cave, just massing his face; quickly, he ducked back and walked, hunched, down the other tunnel. No doubt they would find it and come right after him, unless they took the main tunnel all the way, to see where it led. But no. They weren't that stupid: they'd split into parties and search both tunnels.
He emerged into darkness. It had been hours, after all, that he'd waited. The moon was covered by a few fleece-white clouds, which threw the terrain into semi-darkness. At least he wouldn't be visible, as long as he kept low to the ground. There was nothing to do now but run, run like hell in a straight direction. He ran. Every now and then he slowed down, afraid that he was making too much noise crashing against twigs and kicking stones into gullies. His own breathing seemed far too noisy to him. He slowed down, crouched, and looked back. One man stood outside the main entrance to the cave -- the others were still in the cave, looking for him. He got up and ran at full speed for five hundred yards, slowed down again, out of breath, but continued to walk at a mile-eating pace, moving uphill all the time, into the mountains themselves. Dirt be came sand, sand became rock, and the rocky surface was becoming wetter all the time, and slippery. Soon, he began to crawl and claw his way up, telling himself not to look back. Probably, there was a path that led through, but he hadn't found it; nor did he have time to look for it. So he crawled and scaled, his shoes scraping against smooth rock as he made his way torturously upward. Finally, he reached a flat spot, large enough for him to sit. He was out of breath, and had to stop there. He sat, and panting convulsively, looked down -- possibly three, four hundred feet. I really moved up this thing, he thought, with a certain amount of pride. Down below, he could see well. He was the spectator, viewing the large panorama there. He could see the sand-colored hats of the troopers: six of them, scurrying about like insects, shining flashlights, guns slung over their backs. Out in force, he thought. All for me.
"He has to be around somewhere!" he heard one of them say. "He has to be!" That voice was strangely familiar; not the voice specifically, but where it came from -- then he knew; it was not a southwestern voice, but a New York voice. He didn't ponder the possibilities of that phenomenon, but instead, heaved himself upright and continued the ascent, wondering what could possibly be on the other side. Maybe he was clawing his way to a dead end, where he couldn't go any further. But he couldn't remain, and obviously couldn't go backward. So, forward it was. With a heave, he got up and clutched a jutting rock, tested its solidity, then grasped it and pulled himself up. Three hundred more feet.
He rested again, panting, beginning to feel the effects of high air. His ears rang, and now when he looked down, the people looked like toys, so much so that he almost forgot the reality of their presence there.
He climbed for another hour, and finally reached the top. The mountain was slightly over a thousand feet all told, not much of a mountain as far as statistics go, but a helluva mountain to climb without proper equipment or experience. Now Keith looked down the other side, and saw that there was a narrow gulch separating the mountain he was on from another mountain -- and looking straight across, he could see several more. He was going through a chain of them, and it might possibly take him days to get through them, with the very real risk of killing himself. And there was food to consider. It was too cold to sleep out there, and if he used his energy climbing at this rate, he'd soon be devoid of enough to light his own cigarette.
When he got to the gulch, the ground was relatively flat and smooth. He followed the line along the gulch, and came to an animal path, made by mountain sheep and other game. It was narrow and tenuous -- but heaven, compared to his route up sheer, even more tenuous rock. It led him straight through the Sacramentos and down into a dip to the foothills of the San Andres Mountains. Now, he had two choices: he could skirt north or south and go around them, or go doggedly through them. He chose the latter, with a groan. They would suspect him of choosing the former, unarmed and unequipped with food or clothing.
Along the way, he found a berry bush, and as ravenous as he was, hesitated. Suppose they weren't edible? He wished that Jenny were with him; she would know. She would know everything there was to know about the country around here, but he did not have Jenny, and had to make it by himself. It was a fact that slapped him in the face over and over again.
Gingerly, he nibbled at a berry. It was sweet. Juicy. He ate the whole thing and waited; listened, felt around mentally for impending aches and pains or cramps. Finally, in a fit of hopeless impatience, he gorged himself on them, picking them frantically off the bush. When he had reached satiation, he loaded his shirt pockets with them and continued down the trail.
At dawn, he found a large, overhanging rock and crawled beneath it. He watched the sun come up slowly at first, then in discernible leaps across the sky. The rock jutted far enough to give him shade all day, and concealment from the helicopters he heard above him, moving slowly across the mountains, searching. They moved very slowly, even stood still at times, hovering in the air like monsters about to swoop down, before they lumbered on, whirring and chopping at the air with their propellers. They couldn't spot him under the rock -- but those people were trained hunters, and maybe there was a clue as to has whereabouts that he hadn't even thought of. Maybe they were spotting out his trail at this moment. Whatever, however, he knew he could only remain where he was, using the day for rest and traveling by night.
He lay down and went to sleep.
* * *
Frick and Roper had to scream at one another in order to make themselves heard due to the whirring of the props.
"Think he's in those mountains?" Frick screamed into Roper's ear, who had long ago stopped saying sir, simply because it was another word that had to be uttered and heard, and secretly, Roper knew Frick depended on him out here, rather than the reverse. The lieutenant was a visitor, a tenderfoot from back east who had no idea of the land beneath them -- what that land was, what it could do, what it took to traverse it on foot.
"There isn't a sign of him anywhere!" Roper screamed back. "I don't think he can make it, anyway. He's probably layin' up in there dead."
Frick thought, That's what we all thought back in the hills, but he found that cabin and hid out and got away from us again. He was getting closer and closer to the Mexican border all the time -- if he swung south now, he could make it. That is, if he could make it past customs; if so, he was in, and they were out, as far as possession of Keith Larson was concerned.
But would Larson swing south?
Most people in his situation would. It was quick and relatively easy from this point. But Larson was not most people, as Frick grudgingly had to acknowledge. He was damned exceptional. He would probably head north or straight west to throw them off. If he swung north, he'd head for Colorado or Wyoming, for the Rockies, which he sure as hell couldn't cross without equipment and know-how. If he went west, it'd be through the Indian reservation, across the Rio Grande, through or around a bunch of small semi-ghost towns, and into Arizona. More dry country. Maybe hit Tucson at the bottom of the state -- that was the longest, the hardest, the most unlikely way.
"I think he's heading straight west if he's still alive, Roper," Frick said. Roper snorted.
"That's the dumbest wav of all! Even he'd know that!"
"Which is precisely why he'll go that way," Frick insisted. "Once he gets through the mountains, if he does, what's he got ahead of him?"
"More dry country. The Rio at its lowest point, the reservation -- "
"If he makes the reservation, will the Indians put him up? Hide him?"
"Not likely," Roper laughed. "They ain't real fond of white people. Probably turn him in and ask for a reward."
"Then we've got his trail all mapped out -- we can pick him up any time, if he heads west."
"If he heads west. That's a big if," Roper drawled. He veered off to a forty degree .angle and combed along the gulch that Keith had followed the night before. They passed over the gigantic rock under which he lay hidden. "Hell, he could be under us right now. Under one of those rocks, any of 'em. We can't see him from the air."
"Let's land down there, near that big rock," Frick suggested. Without a word, Roper nosed the chopper, then let it drop straight, settling it slowly like a giant wasp on a large tableau-surfaced rock. He cut the engine and the two men climbed carefully out.
Keith saw them, about a hundred yards away. There was nothing he could do but wait. He was pinned under the rock, unable to move in either direction. Flattening himself on the ground, embracing it, he waited while they looked around. The silence was overpowering except for their occasional voices. He saw a lanky trooper, and a man dressed in khakis that looked remotely out of place on his body. He looked more like the suit-and-tie type: a city detective. Something in his face, his carriage, alerted Keith to that impression.
"No tracks," Roper drawled. "I think we're wastin' our time. Hell, he could be starin' at our backs and we couldn't find him."
"I have a feeling we're close," Frick insisted, looking from rock to rock, of which there were an endless maze. "But I suppose you're right -- we're wasting our time." He glanced at the sky, and saw the reflections and shadows of other helicopters, circling for a moment before they drifted to the south and west.
"They're scanning the border," Roper said. "Maybe he already crossed."
"I doubt it," Frick said firmly. "It's too simple, too obvious."
All the while Keith listened.
"He ain't gonna head west."
"I don't know -- I don't know." The cop with the New York accent seemed doubtful.
He breathed heavily with relief when the two men got into the chopper and took off. They'd been so close! He could have sneaked up on them and jumped one of them: that's how close. But what should he do now? The one guy was positive he'd head west to throw them off, while the other was sure he'd headed toward Mexico already, if he were alive at all. Either way, they'd have the trail covered. How about north, then? Should he head up toward Colorado?
Hell, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, Keith thought irritably. They'll comb every direction until I get out of the state, and they've probably already alerted Arizona and Colorado and Mexico. So it doesn't matter.
Something about traveling west kept pulling at him.
It was the hardest, the longest way; if he kept to that route, maybe he'd manage to fool most people; the Arizona police wouldn't look quite so hard as the Mexican authorities or the Colorado Police. One way or the other, he'd have to move. They'd be back again, tomorrow, perhaps, and if more than one of those damned things landed, they'd have to find him.
When dusk fell, he climbed out of the shelter and made his way through more of the mountainous country. Around midnight, he found a stream, and drank heavily from it, until he felt gut-cramps. You couldn't last long in this country without water. Even in these low mountains, the sun was hot, the air bone dry. It was almost daylight when he came out of the worst of the mountains, into more foothills. Below, under the clear, clean sky, he could see the flat land, looking like a giant table in front of him. He could see a few distant lights -- towns, no doubt, that he would have to steer studiously clear of.
He walked until daylight, and found a crest between two slopes to hide in. It was right near a stream, and he found some more berry bushes that looked like the one he'd found before, back on the other side. Today, at least, he would have food to eat and water to drink. Tonight, he'd strip down and take a bath in the stream, and wash his clothes out. He felt incredibly itchy and dirty -- he felt his face, its tangled, gritty growth. Another couple of weeks, and he'd have a beard again -- uneven and unkempt, but a beard. And he no longer had a very even crew-cut; the hair was growing down his neck and over his ears, and the top of his head felt ridgy in some places and smooth in others. He wondered what he looked like. It'd been a long time since he'd looked in any mirror at all -- at Jenny's, he'd never bothered. There hadn't been time.
Jenny. And farther back, Sally.
Two women unlike one another, unlike Marge; he was glad now that he'd broken with them. An attachment was the last thing he could afford at this point. Better to let them help you, satisfy you, and then cut, finis, the end. He filled his mind with these thoughts as he dozed intermittently between the slopes, listening to the drone of helicopters without looking up. Instead, he burrowed more deeply into the crest and threw some dry grass over his body. From the air, they'd never see him. Convincing himself of it, he fell into a deep, comparatively untroubled sleep.
* * *
Jay Hawkes followed all the newspapers very closely. They still haven't caught him, he thought. He's still loose and alive, or dead and unrecovered. For Jay, this was a disturbing thought -- the police still didn't have their man, and in his mind, this left the case open. It would be marked "Closed" once they had Keith, dead or alive. Preferably dead -- because Jay knew that Keith knew. And as long as he was alive, he could conceivably swing the case around. But for now, it was an impossibility. He was a hunted man, a fugitive, presumed guilty, in spite of what the book said. Everyone was certain that Keith had killed his wife in a fit of jealous rage, nothing more. They didn't suspect justifiable homicide, or self-defense.
And, maybe, just maybe, if Keith were alive, he'd come back for him. One night, just drop in and kill him while he slept. Jay's Cherokee mind was unable to discard this notion.
He had long since gotten over Marge's death. In his own limited way, he'd loved her, but now, in retrospect, it was just as well they hadn't married or done anything else to make it permanent. Now he was free. He wasn't hung up, and he was filthy rich. His second book was almost finished. Keith never had finished those illustrations, but there were enough to provide a substantial nucleus; another artist could finish them up, although not as well as Keith could have. But that collaboration was over. Somewhere out there, Keith was wanted dead or alive.
It would have worked so beautifully if they'd just caught him right away. Stupid cops! Every day you read about killers and criminals getting caught, but Keith had made it so far -- unless, of course, he was dead -- which a lot of the papers were suggesting. Right now, the Albuquerque and Santa Fe papers were full of it, since he was believed to be in New Mexico. Frick was out there, after him; the New York police were looking like dopes, and leveling all sorts of criticism at Frick, who was in charge of the case.
Hawkes finished his drink and turned off the TV.' The eleven o'clock news was over, and they'd made the usual, conjectural commentary concerning the Larson murder, as it was now called.
If there weren't that possibility of Keith's coming after him, Hawkes would be bored by the entire affair at this point.
When Keith awakened, the sun was beginning to sink over the hills, and his stomach growled with hunger. The berries kept him alive, but they came pitifully short of satisfying his hunger, which was painfully constant. He knew vaguely that Arizona was even drier than New Mexico, and that when he got there, water would be scarce. As hungry as he was, food didn't concern him as much as water -- and he felt reasonably certain he could resist the temptation of going into towns, unless the water problem became acute. Then, he'd have no choice, unless he could get moisture out of cactus, like Jay had one of his characters doing in that first book. Ironic: Jay, of all people, giving him helpful hints on survival in the wild country! If it weren't for that information, he probably wouldn't have made it this far.
He could only picture Jay as being totally malevolent, but this time. Every time he saw the face, he saw murder and treachery -- Jay had become a coppertoned Laertes in Keith's mind.
Marge -- he didn't know. He missed her, while he hated her and loved her at the same, crazy, mixed-up time. Sometimes at night, tears streamed in his eyes at the thought of what they could have had but had never attained. It could have been fine. She could have been a good wife. But Jay, that handsome, encroaching bastard, had turned her into a potential killer.
* * *
When Marge and Jay had closed the apartment door behind them, Keith opened his eyes and lay where he was. He had no desire or energy to get up. He was too appalled by what he'd heard, to move. Marge and Jay were trying to kill him! It was incredible! His own wife, his friend -- if someone had been in the room with Keith, he would have called him speechless with disbelief.
Thirty grains.
He'd heard someone say that -- thirty grains of what? He had to find out, had to get himself up and get as far as the night table in the bedroom, where Marge had put it at Jay's barking command. With a grunting effort, Keith raised himself, and once upright, felt dizziness sweep over him, threatening to knock him down again, but he fought it with clenched teeth, determined to get over it. Hell, I can't be that weak.' he thought. Staggering into the bedroom, he swayed over the night table, gasping for breath. He opened the drawer.
There it was.
The stuff he was supposed to end his own life with, as he'd heard Jay say so calmly. Benzedrene, for God's sake! No wonder the drink had tasted funny. Marge had dumped the tiny grains out of the capsule, into his drink. And there was that last time, when he'd tried to get a drink down -- His mind began to whirl crazily, searching for answers. His fatigue? How could he explain that? What had she given him for that?
After turning the apartment upside down he found the answer. It was in the cupboard full of "good dishes" the surplus of wedding presents: arsenic. Good, old-fashioned, unostentatious arsenic. Sure. A little of that stuff each and every day, with coffee -- stimulant and depressant. Holy God! For a blinding instant, Keith felt panic closing in on him. All these weeks, months -- she had been trying to kill him.
Kill me! My own wife!
It was too big a fact to grasp fully, to digest and assimilate calmly. That explained the constant fatigue -- and while he had been rummaging around for that answer, he'd unwittingly stumbled on another: the reason for his supposed lapses into loss of memory, brinks of quiet, screaming insanity. Marge's drawer had been full of his painting supplies -- brushes, canvas tacks, sketch pads, things he'd looked for and, unable to find, sobbed brokenly in helpless frustration. Now it fit. It fit appallingly well.
Marge and Jay had been trying to drive him insane, kill him. And those dreams -- the ones he'd had while on the edge between sleep and half-consciousness -- they hadn't been dreams at all, but reality perceived by a drugged, exhausted organism, himself. Jay and Marge had been making love right on the living room couch.
It came to him with a rush.
His mind was razor sharp, made so by anger and discovery, and the past events were no longer unexplainable. They were horribly simple and obvious.
His first impulse was to kill Jay.
But after thinking about it -- sitting in the chair that he'd been lying drugged in -- he decided to pretend ignorance. He needed evidence, cold, hard, empirical fact with which to hang the son of a bitch. They'd be back eventually, or at least Marge would. He'd lie in this chair and pretend to come out of it slowly, while they were here. The behavior would be a cinch to copy -- he'd been doing it for real for such a long time now.
In a way, it was exciting.
You got the rare chance to play detective, the grand deceiver; too bad it was against your wife and best friend, but c'est la vie, and all that. Keith sat down in the chair, pushed it back, and picked up the book he'd found in his lap. He closed his eyes, thinking, not moving a muscle.
Jay and Marge had made love in the bedroom while he'd been unconscious; when he'd walked into the room looking for the pills, he'd seen the rumpled mattress. It was all so foul, he thought, foul because it was blatant and at the same time underhanded. Making love in front of him, trying to poison him slowly, make him lose his mind. They were the lowest of low tricks in the book. When had it all started? When had they decided that they wanted each other, that the only way to get one another was to get rid of him? God, she'd concealed her hatred for him so cleverly, too! He'd never suspected, the way she ministered to him all the time, going about doing things for him so quietly -- even suggesting that he go see a doctor, go away on a vacation -- she'd played the role to perfection. But there had been flaws, and if he hadn't been so drugged and befuddled and weak, he would have seen them. He realized that now, in grim retrospect. Like the time she'd insisted that they go away, and the thing fell through because she hadn't agreed to any of his suggestions -- and she's engineered the argument so that he didn't agree with hers. Oh, she'd been clever, all right. Very clever. Marge was a smart girl. Now he waited.
He lay in the chair and waited for them, for one of them or both of them, to come back. The performance couldn't take place without an audience; and the audience was very, very select, very limited. Keith's monologue was not to be performed for the masses.
When they came out of the theater, Marge found herself looking at the marquee above. She couldn't remember the name of the movie, she had been so intent on watching Jay's preoccupation with it. His interest in the movie had horrified her. How could he think about anything but what they had done?
Jay took her arm and steered her through traffic toward the curb. When a cab cruised by, he whistled loudly. The cab stopped. Jay opened the door and hustled her into the back seat. She saw him come in after her, and close the door.
He gave the cabbie her address.
"Do we have to go back there?" she whispered.
Jay felt her cling to his arm; it was a gesture of fright, not affection. He patted her arm absently.
"Now's when we're horrified," he reminded her. "We walk into the appalling surprise -- remember? Remember how we decided?" He kept glancing toward the driver's neck and the rear view mirror to see if he was listening. Apparently, he wasn't. The two-way radio was screeching and yakking, and he was busy with that, telling a joke over the thing. They heard laughter on the other end.
Jay Hawkes was mildly surprised at how well things were going. Working like a blueprint, he thought. Now they'd go back to the apartment, find Keith dead, and in their natural fright, call an ambulance, then the police; but the latter only after the ambulance came and pronounced him dead. They'd be shocked, horrified. Marge would break down hysterically and he would stand mute and wide-eyed with disbelief while the cops fired gentle questions at him. Oh hell, it'd work like a charm. He leaned back in the seat and lit a cigarette. Smoke filtered through his nostrils, and to Hawkes, the picture looked bright indeed. It was foolproof all the way down the line -- and after Marge got over her initial woman's weakness and sentimentality, it'd be fine, just fine.
Keith stiffened when he heard the key turn in the door. He closed his eyes and forced his body to go limp. He willed himself, told himself over and over, Don't flinch when they touch you, don't move when they touch you. And it wasn't long before he was in fact touched -- Jay touched him -- rolled his eyes back again, listened to his heart, felt his pulse.
"Still out like a light," he heard Jay say, "but I think he's still alive."
"Oh God," Marge groaned. Keith wanted desperately to look at her, see the anguish in her eyes. But his will had been set. He lay rigid, breathed slowly, shallowly, like a man on the edge of death. It was easy; he'd been doing it naturally for so long, now. "Still? Jay, I can't stand it, this horrible waiting! What do we do?" Jay was silent.
Keith breathed shallowly, then held has breath. "He's sinking fast. We'll just wait, that's all. Pour us a drink."
You're going to be waiting for a helluva long time, Keith thought savagely, because I'm not going to die, hear me? Not going to die. You'll wait until you rot, you sneaky bastard.
He lay there for three hours. To him, it seemed like three days, a thousand hours. Finally, Jay yawned.
Keith stirred fitfully, moaned.
"He's coming out of it!" Marge whispered.
"For God's sakes," Jay said disgustedly.
Keith moaned, stirred, twisted his body, and slowly -- very, very slowly, he opened his eyes. He looked dully around the room with an uncomprehending stare.
"What happened?" he whispered, and his voice came out as a croak; hoarse, dry-sounding.
"Keith, darling, are you all right?" Marge ran to him, and threw herself in his arms. He feigned inability to even embrace her.
"I guess," he croaked.
"Jay and I have been horrified!" she shrieked. "We were ready to call the hospital." Keith suppressed (with an effort) a laugh, and managed to pat her hand absently.
"How long have I been out?" he asked. "About an hour," Jay said. "Must've been that drink."
"What time is it?" His watch was in the bedroom.
"Ten o'clock." You're a damn liar, old man, it happens to be after one, Keith said to himself. They were trying, oh yes, they were trying hard.
"Must've been that booze," he muttered. Marge and Jay agreed. Yeah, must have been.
"Think you'll be okay?" Jay asked. "Sure. I'm sorry I scared you two." Now I'm playing the game, folks. "Well, I'll go home, then. Call if you need anything."
"Thanks, Jay."
"Yes, Jay, thank you so much," said Marge. And I'll play it a helluva lot better than you did. Jay left.
Keith got up, pretending abject weakness, and stumbled into the bedroom. He waited for Marge, who was turning out all the lights and checking the door.
She came into the bedroom.
He locked the bedroom door behind her.
"What're you locking the door for, Keith?" she asked.
"Don't you know?" He stared at her, hard, intently. It wasn't any time at all before her expression became one of horrible understanding. "I see you do know. You know exactly why."
"Keith, lie down, you're tired, nervous --"
"God, Marge, it's amazing, truly amazing how stupid a guy can be about his own wife!" He felt, heard his voice rising, and fought to keep it low-keyed, under control. "You and Jay slipped, though, Marge, you made a serious mistake! You just blandly assumed I'd die from a few lousy bennies -- hell, I used to take 'em all the time in the Army to stay awake. All the time, baby! You'd need a hundred grains to stop my heart."
He moved toward her.
"Keith, let me explain, let me -- " He cut her off with a vicious laugh.
"No, let me get it all straight. I'm a little confused." He lit a cigarette and blew out a nervous cloud of smoke. "Divorce is nasty, but it's essentially civilized, and I assumed you were civilized." He snorted, exhaling another cloud of smoke. "I even assumed Jay was civilized.
But I was wrong; you two coming on like some Renaissance court intriguers, I was definitely wrong.
"You've done more than disillusion me, darling wife, you've ruined me. You have ruined me completely!"
"Keith! Let go!"
"Ruined me, goddamn you, made me into a wreck, made my life into a screaming nightmare! You and that sonofabitch boy friend of yours!"
His hands were around her throat, and it was too late, he knew it was, to stop.
"Bitch! Lousy bitch!" His hands tightened. She said "Keith" with a choked, parched sound that didn't even remotely resemble a human voice.
"Damn you! Damn you to hell!" Her nails raked at him and missed, her body quivered and struggled, but with less force then... then a little less... much less... then, not at all. She slumped limply, and when he let go of her throat minutes later, she dropped in a heap onto the floor.
He knew she was dead.
No question about it. She was very, very dead. For a moment, Keith merely stared down at her, his fingers still twitching madly. She lay there with her eyes horribly wide open, and her throat, which had once been so tender-white, turning purple by horribly discernible degrees. Oh yes, she's dead, he thought.
Dead.
I killed her.
I just murdered a murderess -- It was some time before he snapped back into reality. I'd better call the police, he thought -- no, how can I, what's there to prove? What's there to justify the killing? I'm the murderer. She's the victim.
Funny -- just a minute ago, it was the other way around. I remember it being that way... Then, Keith lost control, and began scurrying about the room, pulling clothes out of the drawer, running into the bath- room for his toilet and shaving stuff, and throwing it all into a suitcase he'd kept at the back of his closet Sure. Run. Just run-run-run-run! What else was there left? he thought frantically. Nothing, nothing else, just run-run-run! Packing the things hurriedly into the suitcase, he closed it tight. He took a last look at Marge, went into his dresser for some money and the keys to the car that was brand new and hardly ever driven. It hadn't been driven for weeks. He wondered frantically if it would start, if people in the other apartments had heard him yelling, if they would see him running toward the elevator with a suitcase in his hands: so many things.
Walking rapidly down the hall, he thought he heard a door open; he wheeled around, but there were no open doors. He smashed the elevator button with the flat of his hand, and nervously watched the dial as it ran backward, 20-19-18-17, finally to his floor. The door opened. He saw a woman running toward it, but didn't hold the door open for her. He pressed "B" hard, and the door closed.
The car wouldn't start. After he flooded the engine, he waited for a while, and tried again. Finally, it started. He wondered if anyone had called the police yet -- he drove out of the basement, up the ramp and out onto the street.
The car clock read one minute after two. One minute after two in the morning. A beautiful time to get the hell out of New York City, with most of the streets emptied of traffic. He shot downtown to the Lincoln Tunnel, whined through it at fifty miles per hour, and came out on the Jersey side. Empty, almost. Hardly any traffic. He almost missed the sharp curve of the off-ramp, and fought the wheel for control -- he wasn't used to driving, and he was panicked. He began to breathe normally again when he hit the Turnpike going south. He had no idea where he was going.
The only certainty was that he was running. It would do no good to call the police, no good to try to explain the circumstances, which until tonight, had escaped even him. How could you explain all those months of slow torture and destruction? Hell, it sounded like a horror fantasy even to think about, silently, in his own whirling mind.
God, he hadn't wanted to kill her! Scare her, yes. Confront Jay with it all, then get a divorce and ache and grieve for a while, but still be left with the chance to build his life from there, or more accurately, rebuild it. But he hadn't wanted to kill her. He didn't want to kill anyone: just Jay Hawkes, because he was an animal.
CHAPTER TEN
Three days later, Keith crossed the border into Arizona. He wouldn't have known, except for the small white sign stuck in the dry sand that said just that: ARIZONA STATE LINE. It was nothing to jump for joy over. It only meant that he had made it through one more swarm of police, one more net out to tangle him in its clutches. After this state, would come the bottom end of California, and if he made it that far, he would have to find a way to slip into Mexico, on the Baja side. It was not as well patrolled as other border points, simply because Baja is hellishly dry, barren country away from the coast, and the authorities could think of no reason why anyone would want to slip into that country. It wasn't like Nogales or Sonoita, over the Arizona borderline. No, there was only one town of consequence over the California line: Mexicali, the town they wrote all the old songs about, but where no one would want to spend a weekend. Mexicali was a dry hole. He had enough friends in New York who knew Mexico well to have been informed of that fact.
That night, he walked through the barren stretch between Willcox and Tombstone. The night before, he had walked through the reservation on the New Mexico border. The Indians had given him water, food, a blanket and some moccasins, without really speaking to him. All had been silence. Their hospitality and gifts had spoken for themselves. He had spent an entire day there, sleeping in someone's hovel, and no one had bothered him. And he knew they knew that he was running from the law: the white man's law, which they had no fervor to support or see win. He would have liked to spend more time there, but realized that he could get them into a great deal of trouble, that things would go hard on them if they were caught harboring a criminal.
Now, he could look north or south, and see a few lights. He was passing between two towns. To the south of him was Tombstone; he knew that for certain, but couldn't recall the town that lay to the north. It didn't matter. He planned to steer clear of both of them.
During the following day, hidden in a clump of greasewood several miles south of Tucson, he spotted the helicopters, then the patrol cars streaking through the dry country, leaving trails of sand in their wakes. They were out in force, and the Arizona State Police were notorious hunters. They had a long, romantic legend behind them that went all the way back to bounty hunters -- which at the moment didn't interest Keith in the least.
He awakened at sunset, and waited for the sun to go down completely before he left his shelter. He hadn't had water all day, and he felt dehydrated from its lack. Heading west, always west, he found water, filled himself to the point of cramps with it, and moved on. He walked fast, feeling his sense of completion, his nearness to the tip of California. He moved faster than be had up to this point, his footsteps silent on the sand, the moccasins that the Navajos had given him more comfortable on his feet.
He made the outskirts of Yuma in three nights of travel. All along the way, he had found food. Once, the night before, he had risked going into a roadside store -- a wooden, pointless shack with a gigantic air conditioner stuck over the transom, bigger, it seemed, than the front of the building itself. The man was old, had stared at him dully, without anything like recognition. He had bought a loaf of bread and two packages of ham, and eaten the stuff on the way. By morning, when he had to hide again, he was down to a few slices of bread. But it was enough to keep him going. It seemed a feast after so many successive days of subsisting on berries and cactus flesh.
Then, California: it was absurd to go to El Centro, which was considerably inland, more or less centered between the Pacific and the California Gulf. He was in Calexico, a small, dry town full of dead people hovering on the Mexican border.
This was the spot.
God, I've done it, he thought. I've really done it. Now he changed direction and headed straight ahead, dead south. He had made it on foot from Roswell to Calexico. That was a helluva long way -- dimly, without humor or sense irony, he realized that he had enacted the scene of Jay's book: traveled west on foot, through hostile people and hostile land. Jay never had. Now that Jay was rich and safe, Jay never would. But Keith Larson had, by necessity rather than choice -- but he'd done it. Now, he was there.
Calexico is oppressively small. It is gravelike in its silence. The people have given up pretending they live in paradise; they are much too far from the Gulf to enjoy its advantages or beauty; they are surrounded by arid desert land; water is piped in to them, water that they are always in danger of being without. The citizens are not friendly; they do not welcome strangers, who in their minds constitute one more mouth hungry for precious water. It is a hell-town.
Keith didn't spend much time lingering in it, as it was against his better judgment to even set foot inside its boundaries. He lingered long enough to buy a canteen, fill it with water, buy another loaf of bread, and be on his way. It would have been nice stepping into a restaurant and gorging on a meat dinner, have a cold beer -- but he didn't South, now.
Night.
He skirted east of Mexicali, still heading straight south, looking frantically in the dark for border patrol or customs -- but didn't find any. Once, he spotted a white car off to the west of him, with a long antenna extending from it. A Border Patrol car, no doubt. But they didn't see him. He kept low to the ground, and made his way south, in a line toward Puerto Isabel, which would require another night, perhaps two, of steady walking before he reached it. But it would be there. Once on the Gulf, he could make his way straight down the coastline until he hit any of the fishing villages that suited him. Keith breathed a sigh of relief and walked slowly, munching on a piece of bread. The night air was cold and dry: it was good walking. Tomorrow would be hell. There would be no shelter readily available. No need to hide, but there was a crying need to shelter oneself from the sun and heat and blowing sand. If worse came to worse, he would bury himself in sand, where the temperature was ten to eighteen degrees cooler than the burning surface. Another one of Jay's inadvertent tips on survival.
* * *
Frick heaved a weary sigh and flipped his butt into the sand.
"He's either dead or out of the state," he said to the commissioner.
"I'm inclined to agree with you," the commissioner answered. "What're your plans?"
"I don't know. He hasn't been spotted in Arizona or Colorado. The Mexican authorities haven't seen him trying to get through -- I just don't know."
"You're not still hot on that idea about him taking the long way through, are you?"
"No. I think I'll fly back to New York tomorrow. Maybe -- it's a long shot, but maybe -- something'll turn up back there. This was a wild goose chase I never should've gone on. But I want to thank you for your cooperation." The two men shook hands somberly, and Frick went into the barracks, glad to be out of the hot sun. He tossed his hat on the bunk and stood in front of the air conditioner, sure he'd catch cold from its icy blast, and not giving a damn if he did. It was ungodly hot there. Dry, clean hot, not wet, muggy garbage-reeking hot like it was in New York; but hot was hot, A hundred ten degrees plus in the sun was undeniably hot. Men keeled over from that kind of heat. In New York, you just complained and sweated and snapped at people like an irritable dog.
Where was Larson?
What had happened to him?
Was he dead, alive, or somewhere between? All were rhetorical questions at this point, because there wasn't a way in the world to find the answers. Frick decided that he'd be spinning his wheels out there. Best to go back East and hunt around -- question Hawkes some more, nose around the Larson apartment, ask the neighbors more questions, so through some old belongings. Do anything, but do something. Maybe the murder wasn't as simple and obvious as everyone thought, including himself. Maybe there's more to it.
Larson was a nice guy.
Hawkes was also a nice guy. He'd had to catch a lot of nice guys in his years on the force -- he was cynically wary of nice guys.
The ride to the airport in Albuquerque was silent, for the most part. Frick sat in the front seat next to his driver, lost in thought. The driver clipped along at a good, steady speed, turning on the siren every now and then to get cars the hell out of the way. He moved along at an unbroken eighty-five. Frick racked his brains. The thing had run into an inconclusive dead end. He hated dead ends, for obvious reasons.
When the plane flew eastward, Frick had a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He was flying farther and farther away from Larson, his sole objective. It was depressing to dwell on. But what else could he do? he asked himself. Hell, Larson had disappeared from the face of the earth, and he couldn't stay away indefinitely. Maybe something would turn up. Maybe it wouldn't.
Frick didn't want to think about the latter possibility. Something had to turn up, he thought.
* * *
When he reached Puerto Libertad, on the Mexican mainland side, Keith knew he had to get across the Gulf into Baja. Mexico would be hot; people would be looking for him. Baja was the strip Mexico preferred to forget, since it was uninhabitable away from the coastline. At Libertad, he found a fisherman working on his boat. He was a Mexican, old, wrinkled from the sun and salt air, year after year. The mark of the land was written on the man's features, an ominous sign to Keith.
"Hello," he said as he approached the man, who looked up at him, his hand shielding his face against the early morning glare.
"Senor," he said, and turned back to the spar on his boat, which he was gluing and taping together.
"Could you take me across?"
"Where," senor?"
"The nearest village."
"That would be San Luis," the man nodded. "I can take you there."
"How much do you want to take me?"
"Huh?"
"Money? How much money do you want?"
The man looked at his spar. You could see in his eyes that didn't place enormous faith in the tape and the glue -- that he knew it would all come apart, eventually.
"Enough to buy a new spar," he said. Keith asked him how much it was.
"Ten dollars would buy a fine one." the man answered, and Keith handed him a ten-dollar bill. He waited around for an hour, while the old guy fixed his spar and got the boat under way. Then they sailed across the Gulf. The sun was incredibly hot as it bounced off the smooth water. Not a breeze stirred anywhere. The old man rowed, caught the tide and took it across, guiding with the oar, the sail taken down. Keith sat in the stern, watching. He lit a cigarette; it tasted dry, lousy. He was thirsty, and wanted to ask for a drink of water, but maybe the old man had a tough time getting the stuff for himself, let alone for intruding guests.
The boat moved with agonizing slowness.
It was after noon when the boat pulled into San Luis' harbor, which was empty except for a few boats, one of them a high-powered Owens cruiser that looked sorely out of place amidst the other primitive sailing vessels. She stood in the slumbering water, bobbing disinterestedly, looking sleek and well-fed and content. Her white hull glistened. Her decks were solid hardwood, varnished to a sheen. Keith wondered if the ship belonged to anyone who lived in San Luis, or just to an American fisherman picking up on some good Gulf quarry. It almost had to belong to an American, he thought.
The old man pulled into the harbor, and Keith thanked him, moving along the pier until he got onto dry ground. He kept looking at the boat, and finally let curiosity tug him along toward it.
* * *
Jay gave the girl two one-hundred-dollar bills. Quietly, she put them in her pocketbook, and turned to him. She was big-breasted, wide-hipped and heavy in the buttocks and thighs, the way he liked them. That way, you had a lot to work with.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked him. He grinned and told her to take off her clothes. This the brunette did without a qualm. For her trade, it was a logical beginning. The guy was good-looking, strong and mild-mannered. And for two bills, she'd do anything, as weird as he wanted to get.
"Sit on the bed," he told her. She sat, her heavy, firm thighs flattening against the mattress. His heart beat wildly. His throat felt dry, and his hands twitched with excitement as he went into his closet and selected a belt: a big, black leather thing with a heavy buckle. He turned, and she saw it.
"Not that belt, mister. Johns don't like me all marked up. Here." Jay watched while she dug into her purse and extracted a white cotton belt. She gave it to him.
"It'll hurt just as much, but it won't leave marks," she whispered confidentially. Jay took the belt from her, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, working hard.
"Lay down on your back," he gasped, and he watched her spread her massive woman's body upon the bed. Her breasts loomed out like beacons of flesh, the nipples large, vulnerable. Jay quickly undressed and stood over her, while she looked up at him with frightened eyes, heavily made up. It was part of the act -- they didn't get their kicks unless they thought you were scared.
He hit her. It didn't hurt.
She pretended to whimper with pain, and tried to move to the other side of the bed, while he went after her, panting. He hit her again, and the belt made a cracking, menacing sound -- but it didn't hurt, just stung slightly. He hit her across the breasts and belly and thighs, turned her over with rude hands and beat her buttocks and the back of those abundantly fleshed thighs.
All the time, she screamed.
He called her names, dropped the belt, and smacked her with his bare hands.
"You're faking it, damn you!" he growled, hitting her in the stomach.
"Oomph!" His fist smashed into her again, and again, and she tried running across the room, out of breath. Lousy hooker isn't gonna fake me, he thought wildly, chasing her. When he got her in a corner, he pinned her arms behind her back.
"For two hundred bucks, I get my money's worth," he told her savagely, and threw her hard against the floor.
He took her.
She settled into the routine, knowing what he wanted, then.
"Don't hurt me, please!" She struggled in his arms, but he pushed against her, pried her legs painfully apart, and made his way to her unwilling flesh; she cried into his shoulders and scratched at him, begging him not to hurt her, but the more she protested, the more violently he slammed his body against her.
"I'll make you want it," he snarled, and she waited until he was grasping her hips with his hands before she slowly, hesitantly, in an attitude of acquiescence, embraced him with her thighs and drew him sweetly down into her now-hungry flesh.
She moved hesitantly, innocently. "Like this, darling?"
"No -- like this." His hands guided her, and she imitated with virginal sweetness.
"Don't hurt me, dear. I've never -- you know."
Jay suddenly became gentle. He moved on top of her slowly, considerately and kissed the lobe of her ear. It had taken some doing, he thought wildly, but now she was his, and would be his forever.
"Baby!" he panted.
"Darling, it's glorious!" she sighed, embracing him hotly, and blowing her breath into his ear.
She felt him stiffen, and explode all around her. She stiffened too, pretended ecstatic, incredulous pleasure, and sobbed and thrust her hips and body at him.
"Marge, lover!" he gasped.
Who in hell is Marge? she wondered.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Its name was Heron, registered out of San Luis. But even so, Keith still thought the ship belonged to an American, though he was at a loss to conjecture just what an American would be doing living in San Luis. You couldn't make a living here unless you fished -- and that big beauty of a cruiser was no fishing boat. It could possibly belong to a writer or a retired individual.
Now that he was over the line, and intended to stay here, either on the Gulf side or the Pacific side (it didn't matter which), his courage returned to him. Keith had no qualms about walking down the dock-line to the boat to look at it more closely. He surprised himself at how fast his ability to travel in daylight returned, after being conditioned to nocturnal habits for so long.
The ship was immaculate.
Whoever owned it kept it in prime condition, which meant it got used quite a bit. Ships rotted more quickly from disuse. She was a beauty. He walked toward the prow of her, noticing how she rested jauntily in the water -- which, even looking down into it from dockside, was jewel blue green. The salt-smells cleared his senses and made them operate at an undreamed-of peak of awareness.
The Heron was queen in the harbor, resting next to the other sailing craft and fishing ketches. In Keith's mind it represented the remnants of the "other side."
He was tempted to step aboard, but thought he heard sounds coming from the cabin. He waited a while, and soon a woman dressed in white ducks and striped jersey sleeveless blouse stepped out of the cabin onto the deck.
The woman impressed him more than the ship.
The first thing he noticed was her deep tan: not the tan of summer, destined to fade on her return to some city, but the tan of a permanent dweller who lives only in sunlight from January to December. Her hair, normally blonde, was bleached to an almost platinum color from the sun, and she used a pinkish lipstick to outline her sensuously full lips. The ducks outlined the contours of her legs and thighs -- and he saw that they were firm and feminine with benevolent heredity. Her hips were gently curved, and swept inward toward the waist which was incredibly slender. Her breasts thrust youthfully against the blouse, and had a magnificent uplift to them. A beautiful woman, probably an American. God only knew what she was doing here.
Her face was young, but not girlish, not even innocent. It was a face that showed plainly the signs of living, of disillusionment. Yet it was unquestionably a young face. Keith, who knew faces and bodies, judged her to be in her middle or late twenties.
She looked at him.
"Can I help you with something?" she asked.
"I was just admiring your boat," he answered. "It sort of stands out around here. I was naturally curious."
"You're new here." Not a question, but a highly assertive statement.
"Yeah. Just came into San Luis."
"Fair or foul?"
"Fair or foul? How do you mean?"
"The law," she laughed, "Are you fair or foul of the law?"
"It's a long story," he hesitated.
"You just answered my question. But it seems we're the only two Americans here at the moment, and I'm hungry to talk to one -- my name's Helen Lord. I live in that house right over there." Keith followed the direction of her finger, and saw a cottage, built of wood and tiled roof. It reminded him of the kind you saw in pictures of southern France. It had no lawn, as nothing did around here. All was sand and clam shells and driftwood and boats of one kind or another. There was no grass anywhere.
"You live here all the time?" he asked her.
"Yes. All the time. I like it. I'm not bothered, I don't have to play anybody's little game, and as long as I get my alimony every month, I'm real easy to please."
"Divorced?"
"Yep. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to live until that bastard and I called it quits." She twisted her voice into a sardonic sneer, and Keith saw that he'd been right about his impression of her face.
"Well, I'm sorry I bothered you," he said. "I'll be moving on." He started to turn away, when she called him back.
"Wait! Where're you planning on going?"
"There must be a cottage for rent around here, a room or something. I have some money."
"I wouldn't. Most of these cottages have rats or scorpions, or both. And they're charming, gracious folks, but they might wonder about you. Why don't you slay on my boat? It has everything you need -- be a bit cramped, but better than one of those hovels." "I wouldn't want to put you out."
"Mister, I don't let anybody put me out. My ex taught me better -- so why don't you stay here?"
Keith shrugged.
"Okay, if you're sure you don't mind."
He stepped down onto the deck from the pier, and saw that she wasn't very tall in reality: he'd thought she was much taller, she stood so erect, and his perspective had been distorted from where he'd stood above her on the pier. Helen Lord was a nice, neat, compact little bundle of womanhood -- and hard as nails. Fine. He didn't want any involvements, not even to the extent he'd had with Sally and Jenny. No involvements, no pain afterward. It was that simple, that basic.
She showed him the cabin, the galley, the head, how to work the stove and the ice box, the AM band on the radio.
"All the conveniences," she said, "You'd be a sucker to refuse."
"You're right," he said. "I've forgotten what a mattress feels like."
"Are you in bad trouble? You don't have to answer if you don't want. It's none of my business."
"As bad as you can get."
"Kill someone?" she asked indifferently.
"Yes. My wife." He waited for the horrified expression, the sudden arching of eyebrows, the gaping of her jaw, widening of eyes -- something to express incredulity or repugnance.
It never came.
She seemed to accept it as common.
"She must've been quite a bitch," was her sole outward reaction. "You look like a reasonably nice guy."
"She was. I always thought I was."
"She cheat on you?" Helen Lord made no bones about her curiosity now.
"Yeah, but that's no reason for killing. She tried to kill me -- she and her lover, my friend. But try proving it." He had a keen desire to spill his guts, tell her the whole thing, just to get it off his chest. But she hadn't invited unqualified confession yet, so he remained halting, giving it to her in bits and pieces, as she asked for it.
"Of course you can't prove it."
"You guessed it. And of course you find-this all very difficult to believe."
"Not at all. I tried to kill my husband."
Keith's eyebrows did lift, and his jaw did gape, and he was horrified.
"He drove me out of my mind. I wound up going to a psychiatrist for a year; then we divorced each other. It's as difficult to explain as your situation."
"I hate to sound corny, but it seems as though we have things to talk about -- things in common."
Helen laughed; it was a harsh, grating sound, without humor.
"We sure do, mister. We have a whole helluva lot to discuss. Tell you what -- I always sleep for a couple of hours in the morning, then come afternoon I either take the boat out and do some fishing, or I swim. Since it's afternoon, and I've done my sleeping, I'm ready to take the boat out. If you'll just help me with the anchor, and guide me out while I reverse her, you can go down in the cabin and get cleaned up. There's a cold shower there, and a bunch of sea duds that belonged to my husband. I never threw them out, like I'd planned."
"Okay." He hauled the anchor aboard, coiling the rope on the prow, and took the long dock-pole and kept the boat from hitting the pilings as she slowly backed out of the slip. She made a complete sweeping turn, and headed half-throttle for the Mexican mainland side, before she turned a hard ninety degrees and headed straight southward. Keith went down into the cabin and stripped. His clothes were stinking and clammy. He went into the shower and pulled the rope, and cold, stinging water hit his body. With an act of will, he stood under it, soaping himself, cleaning himself as he hadn't been clean in a long, long time. When he came out, he looked under a bunk and found a small chest full of man's clothes. He found a bathing suit which was just slightly big for him and a short-sleeved sport shirt. He put them on, leaving the shirt open, and climbed up to the deck, then to the cockpit, where Helen Lord was holding onto the wheel easily.
"Now you look human," she said. "And familiar." Keith had even found a razor, and although the water had been ice cold, he shaved the contours of his growing beard, which now had a discernible shape. "Very familiar."
"You never did ask me for my name," he reminded her.
"I assumed you'd give me a phony one anyway, so why ask?"
"It's Keith Larson."
"I thought so. The papers are full of you. You're a real foul fiend, to hear them tell it."
"You're not afraid of me?"
"Afraid? You're tired, beat, just want to rest -- I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything, but it seems like you should be more afraid of me. I could turn you in, or something cruddy like that."
"I'm glad. Glad you're not afraid of me."
"No." She choked the throttle down, and cut the boat to trolling speed. "Oh hell, I don't want to troll today," she said impulsively, and cut the engine altogether. There was sudden silence, except for the boat sloshing in its own wake, being turned by the tide. "Heave the anchor, will you, Keith?"
He climbed up on the prow and tossed. It hit the water with a splash and spiraled downward, out of sight.
"I'm going to fish. Care to join me?"
"Tomorrow," he said. "I love to fish. But right now I'm so beat -- "
"Sure. It figures. They've been running hell out of you. Go on down and grab some sleep." For the first time, she smiled with something resembling warmth.
He went below and slept like a dead man, rocked to unconsciousness by the gentle swaying of the boat in the water.
When he awakened, it was strangely quiet, except for muted sounds outside the cabin. He blinked his eyes and looked around quizzically, forgetting for a moment where he was. Then he spotted an alarm clock, a Big Ben illuminated, screwed to the wall. It was seven o'clock, the ship grated gently against a piling, and he knew they were in the slip.
Helen was gone.
She'd left him sleeping, and now he felt better. His eyes didn't burn any more, and his head was wonderfully clear. Keith stirred in his bunk, stretching his body until the bones cracked satisfyingly. He lay there for a moment before he swung his legs over the edge and hit the floor, then stood upright and hit his head against the ceiling. He cursed, stooped over to conform with the height of the ceiling, and made his way to the galley. Opening the ice box, he saw it was full of beer, cold cuts, mustard, and some cold roast beef. Below, on the bottom shelf, was a loaf of bread, unopened.
Enough for some dinner.
Real dinner, real food: meat, bread, beer. A feast to him, who had lived on berries and cactus flesh, and had eaten bread and ham on the run, his mouth working to the rhythm of his legs. Now he could sit down in silence and listen to the radio, which he turned on before getting down to the pleasant business of building himself a generous sandwich.
At the moment, he wasn't interested in just who Helen Lord was. She was beautiful, but he was determined not to make that a concern of his. The only significant fact about her was that she'd given him refuge without asking too many questions, and the answers she'd received hadn't shocked her.
That, for Keith, was sufficient.
He ate two sandwiches, downed two bottles of beer, and felt too well-rested to try going back to sleep. He remembered seeing some books under the bunk where he'd found the clothes.
He remembered the last book.
A book he'd started, but had never finished: he'd remember that book the rest of his life, which at this stage of the game, had an undetermined length. But he found the books and sifted through them: mostly mysteries, westerns, a few science fiction. For obvious reasons, he had no desire to read a mystery, so he chose a western. He turned on the overhead light and began to read.
He read twenty pages before he threw it down in disgust. It was unspeakably corny, and criminally inaccurate. He knew more about Indians and the West than the writer did! After the research for Jay's books -- Don't think about that either, Keith, he told himself. Now that he was here, presumably safe, what was he going to do? The time had come to answer that question. Now that he had time to think, he didn't want to live here forever with a murder stigma on him. But quite obviously, he couldn't prove a thing from San Luis, Baja California. Then again, he wasn't about to risk going back to New York and getting picked up before he could start unraveling things. He was presumed, even proven guilty by the press, the police, the public mind. For the time, it had to suffice. He would have to stay here and make the best of it. It was more important to live than to be a dead hero, trying to prove himself, vindicate himself in the eyes of the public that didn't want to think any differently anyhow.
* * *
After the hooker had left his apartment, Hawkes lay back on his bed, thinking. He remembered his last sobbing gasp as his release arrived -- Marge, lover. It wasn't over, after all. He'd thought it was, had been positive of it. Not that he'd really loved her. But Marge had offered him something that no other woman had -- her conflict between innocence and evil had appealed tremendously. She had wanted to experiment in - the subterranean depths of depraved sex and lust -- yet at the same time, she had tried to pull herself out of it, had tried to steer clear of it: like the virgin wanting to become a woman while holding onto her virginity. There had been that girlish innocence in her, coupled with the blazing desire to become wanton and cruel in her love habits. She would have offered many years of boundless pleasure. Hawkes had searched for a woman like her for many years, and had finally found her -- had been willing to do anything on God's earth to make her his, up to and including murder. Cruel, underhanded murder, in which she would have been an instrumental part. It would have constituted another ingredient in her appeal: a woman capable of that much cruel, depraved lust! How sweet it had been when they'd made love in the bedroom, with Keith's presumably dying body uppermost in their minds! How sweet to watch her turn slowly from revulsion to thorough-going lust and savage adoration for the act! Corruption! Cruel, limitless pain!
But that was gone, now.
Hawkes, fortunately, could afford to pay for his bizarre whims, could afford to hire high-priced call-girls to sleep in for the night with him. Hundred-dollar hookers charged him as much as two hundred, due to his "special needs." But he was willing to pay and pay until he found another Marge. He knew one thing.
His kind of woman would either be older, like fortyish and horribly frustrated, or extremely young, in her teens. Marge had been a gross exception to the usual pattern. Sometimes very young girls, in their early teens, exhibited that streak of lust -- with an older, more experienced man who would give them lots of money and clothes and records, anything they wanted. Or, middle-aged widows with good bodies and undiminished desires. Most women outside one of those categories had no trouble finding what they wanted.
He knew he was paying for illusion, rather than reality. These hookers weren't in it, heart and soul, the way he was, the way Marge had been. He wanted the real thing. He would scour the city from one corner to the other to get it. Lust. Cruelty. Torture. All very much on Hawkes' mind.
* * *
Frick wasn't surprised to see that the city hadn't changed one iota when he returned. But he was surprised at his reaction to it: something bordering on gladness to see the buildings, the people, the confusion. This was familiar to him; this was the jungle he knew well, and could chart his way through with little difficulty.
He took a cab from the airport to his apartment. There, he showered, stripped down to his skivvies and slept for six hours. When he awakened, he called in.
"What?! No results? Not even a clue? God, Frick! Were you asleep out there?"
There wasn't much use in trying to explain things over the telephone. He dressed and waited for the squad car to pick him up. He nodded perfunctorily at the patrolman driving and climbed in front next to him. Lighting a cigarette, he remained gloomily silent all the way downtown to the precinct.
When he got there, he went right to work. He had the file on the Larson case brought to him, and leafing through it, picked out the names of all the people involved. One by one, he called them, set up appointments for them to come to the station or for him to go to their homes -- either way would do, he explained, he just didn't want to inconvenience them any more than he had to. In times of stress, Frick could be diplomatic, and this certainly was a time of stress, with all his superiors angry and belligerent, and the public highly indignant that an escaped murderer hadn't been caught by the police. Frick was very much the underdog.
Several days elapsed; he talked to the same people. Nothing new, nothing he could grab, came up. The stories were the same, tediously so. Nothing.
One chance left.
One prospect that something might develop: Jay Hawkes.
Frick picked up the telephone and called Hawkes' apartment; he let it ring, fifteen, twenty times, before he hung up. Hawkes was busy these days, he knew -- literary cocktail parties, rounds with the publisher -- Hawkes was very much in the news these days, in the book sections of the newspapers and magazines. He'd try again, later, on a slim bet that he might be reached at night, although it was indeed slim. To catch a single, young, rich man at home in the evening was stretching your hopes a bit; unless, of course, he was doing some private entertaining, in which event you could expect a bare minimum of cooperation.
* * *Keith had just turned in a San Diego station when he heard footsteps ringing down the pier, toward the boat -- instinctively, he turned the radio off and waited, every muscle in his body tensed, poised for running, quick flight, through the head hatch and over the side, as it would be the only escape route available to him.
"Hey, you decent down there?" It was Helen Lord. He breathed a sigh of relief.
"Yeah, come on down."
Helen appeared in the doorway, her body framed by it, in the soft glow of the overhead lamp Jay had turned on over the top bunk. She had changed her outfit -- a clean pair of white ducks and a long-sleeved khaki shirt, tailored to fit her precisely. The night air was cool, with the breeze whipping in from the ocean side across the narrow strip of land called Baja.
She came down and sat on a bottom bunk.
"Find everything all right?"
"Yes. Your food's excellent."
"Glad you think so. Tomorrow, we'll go to the store and fill up."
"Should I go?" Keith asked, wondering if he should descend on San Luis like a public figure.
"The quicker you get known in this town, the better. Otherwise, you'll be a mystery, and people'll talk -- they love mysteries. Otherwise, they mind their own business. That's why I live here."
"Okay. I want to thank you."
"Don't bother. I don't even know why I'm doing it."
"Maybe it's because you're nicer than you think."
"I'm a hateful person, Keith -- what you'd call an accomplished bitch. I don't feel sorry for myself. Hell, I'm too self-sufficient for that. But I honesty can't find a single thing to like about myself. I gave my husband a pretty rough go-round."
"Hew did he treat you?"
"Like scum."
"And you took it until it drove you nuts."
"Yes -- but I could've tried, I think. Bill was mixed-up, frustrated. Always wanted to paint, coincidentally, but never found the time. His business had him captured, he was a slave to it. You know how that sort of thing works: we never made love or anything, and after a while, I got involved with his partner -- it was a mess."
"I'll bet."
"One night, he tried to humiliate me at a party -- we lived in Frisco -- told me to bring it out in the open and all, just perform a public love-act in front of everyone, with his partner. Henry was embarrassed. I was infuriated. Later, when we got home, I tried to stab him, I was so furious. Another year with the head shrinker, lots of fights, lots of tension, a separation, and finally a divorce, and here I am. Better forgotten, I think."
"Forgotten, so long as you know all the answers," Keith said gently. "Otherwise, it eats you up inside -- you go on hating a whole species for one member, which isn't fair."
"Don't you hate women? Be honest, now. Secretly, don't you?"
"No. I'm afraid, a little leery, but I don't hate them. Marge was one in a million -- I'm hoping so, anyway."
"You're an exceptional man."
"Not at all. I just had a lot of time to think while I was running. You have more time than you know what to do with when you're by yourself, no one around to talk to."
"Was it rough, real rough?"
"Yes," he admitted. "I couldn't go through it again."
"Is there any beer left?" Helen asked. "Lots," Keith told her, and went into the box to get a couple. Opening them, he handed her one.
"Thanks. Do you want to talk about you?" she asked consolingly.
"Only if you want to talk about yourself. You need the therapy as badly as I do."
They talked well into the night.
Helen lay on one bunk, while Keith lay on the one opposite, and they talked while the light burned into their eyes. Finally, she asked him to turn the damn thing off, and he did, plunging the cabin into darkness. There was nothing coy about Helen; Keith didn't take this as a hint of any kind. He knew that if she wanted to get cozy, she'd damned well say so.
"You're a good guy, Keith."
He laughed uncertainly in the dark, pulled on his cigarette, then handed it to her for a final drag, as he'd been doing all night.
"Thanks. Nice of you to say so."
"I mean it. If you knew me better, you'd know I mean it. Do you miss your wife?"
"Not in the usual way," he said, groping for the words, the right words that would describe his feelings toward Marge, after all that had happened. "You might say I eat my guts out over what she wasn't, what I'd have liked for her to be. It's hard as hell to explain."
"You're glad to be rid of the Marge you remember, and you wish you had the Marge you thought she was, in the beginning. I know the feeling well."
"That's it," he agreed, "that's the way it was."
"What're your plans?"
"I can't afford the luxury."
"Yes you can. You're perfectly safe here. They can't touch you. Would you want to stay here?"
"I suppose. Sure, hell, why not?" he shrugged in the darkness; but Helen could hear the shrug in his voice.
"My place is big enough for two -- now that isn't an invitation to go sleeping with me -- just a nice, friendly little gesture of hospitality, because I like you."
"I didn't think it was anything else," he said quietly. "That's rather obvious."
"I suppose it is, Keith. I don't mean to be nasty or frigid or bitchy. It's just that I hurt very much inside."
"That makes two of us." He got up in the dark and groped toward the box. Helen heard the door open and close; a beer can popped open with a gassy sound. He fumbled back toward his bunk, and lay down, the can in his hand.
"I've only got two people in my life, now," she said. "I try and keep things as simple as possible. Maybe I'm being a fool by adding you. There's Juan, an old fisherman who lives nearby; he takes care of this boat for me -- cleans it, works on the engine, whatever has to be done. I give him twenty bucks a week, and it's a fortune to him. Then there's his daughter, Marie. They're the only people I talk to beyond mere formality."
She puffed on her cigarette.
Keith sipped his beer, looking toward the alarm clock. It was four in the morning.
"We've been talking a long time," he said.
"I'm for some sleep. Let's go home."
Keith agreed, turned on the overhead light, and blinked owl-like in the sudden glare. He let Helen make her way to the deck,, then turned it off.
The cottage was a simple affair, consisting of a single bedroom, a living room, kitchen, bathroom and large, screened back porch, facing the gulf.
"This is home," she said. "All I need."
"You sure I won't be in the way here?" Keith asked, doubtful of its size.
"Not at all. We'll set up a cot here in the living room, and everything will be just lovely, so long as you behave." She smiled playfully. Some of the animosity seemed to be gone out of her now, and Keith was aware of a much more appealing, attractive woman than he'd met hours ago.
She got him towels and washcloths and linen.
"Thanks,," he said. "Now go to bed, it's late."
"Time means nothing here," she said. "You can sleep all day if you want."
"I haven't got much money left," he answered. "I have to think of a way to earn my half."
"Dear Keith, I get a nice, fat check for two thousand dollars at the beginning of each month -- when I splurge, I spend five hundred of it. Don't sweat it."
"I couldn't do that."
"Oh, for God's sake, stop being stubborn! I know you're a man, not a mouse -- so don't go trying to assert your masculinity around here. Good night."
"Good night."
He watched her disappear into the bedroom. She closed the door; but he didn't hear the sound of a lock turning.
* * *
The next afternoon, when they awakened, Keith met Juan and his daughter Marie, who came to the cottage; Juan to ask about the Heron, and Marie to do some laundry for Helen.
"This is my distant cousin, Senor Larkin," Helen introduced him. Keith noticed the closeness to his real name: Larkin-Larson. Don't worry, he told himself, Helen knows what she's doing.
"How do you do?" He shook Juan's hand, which was at once respectful and assertive. He was older-looking than he really was, his skin parched and dried from years of sun and water and hard work.
Marie was quite different.
She could be sixteen or twenty-five, Keith wasn't sure. Her eyes were a bright, shining black, as was her hair, which she wore straight over her shoulders. It was sumptuously long, and glistened healthily. Her skin, like her father's, was the color of burnished copper, but totally unlike Juan's, was smooth, cream-like in texture, and unblemished. Her young breasts pushed against a white, peasant-type blouse, and even under her full, long skirt, you could see that the legs were fine, the thighs full and rounded, the hips swollen -- A fine-looking young woman, Marie. But Keith noticed this only in passing; he turned to Juan and Helen, and spoke. While their back" were turned, Marie's black eyes burned into Keith's back with strange, vast hunger. She licked her lower lip, and her face momentarily twisted into a look of sheer torment. Then, it became as impassive as ever, as she went into the bedroom to collect the laundry that Helen had stuffed into a bag.
Helen gave them coffee and cake, and they left -- Juan headed for the boat, Marie back to their cottage with Helen's laundry. When they were gone, Helen laughed softly.
"What's so hilarious?" Keith wanted to know. "Marie's burning up for you," she smiled. "That girl's got a real letch for you."
"Aw, hell," Keith scoffed, taking a final sip of hot coffee. The gulf breeze whipped through the open window and filled his nostrils with fish and tar and salt -- a good smell, when you mixed it all up into one. "You have a fan already," Helen said. "I don't want fans. I don't want to be noticed by a single soul."
"Not even me?" Helen asked, pretending hurt. "Of course, you; we live together."
"Don't worry about Marie. She's as shy as a deer. If you raised your voice, she'd take off like a jet airplane. Juan's one of those old-fashioned fathers who'd beat hell out of his daughter and kill her lover, if he didn't marry her."
Helen had a car, a late-model Chevy convertible.
She gave Keith the keys and he followed her directions into town, which consisted of twenty small buildings at the most.
"It's complete here," she commented, "just limited. A New York boy like you might have a rough time adjusting."
"I always wanted to leave that city."
"You'll love it here, then. There's the market. You can park anywhere. There aren't enough cars to create a parking problem around here."
She told him to find whatever he liked and dump it into the shopping cart. They were in the only modern store in town. He did as she told him, and between the two of them, bought a fantastic amount of groceries. His long pent-up hunger got the best of him, and he went wild, like a kid in a candy store. Meat, potatoes, onions, sauces, pickles, fruit -- there was no stopping him. Helen apparently understood, because she watched him with a tender, indulgent smile.
The bill came to forty dollars and change.
He was flabbergasted.
"Stop worrying about it," she told him. "This stuff'll last us for weeks."
"I sure hope so."
"Get out of the habit of being frugal now, Keith. I'm not a frugal person, and it'll just create a bone of contention between us. Please?"
"Okay," he smiled, "It's your dough."
"Our dough."
"Okay."
"Good."
After they had been home for perhaps an hour, Marie returned with the laundry, folded in two baskets. Instinctively, Keith rushed out to help her. He took one basket from her, smiling quietly.
"Gracias -- thank you," she said, as though correcting herself.
"You're welcome. That's a big load for one person." She looked at him for the briefest moment possible, burning with hunger; then she turned her head away, blushing and ran ahead of him, while he made his way slowly into the house.
Maybe Helen was right.
Something was disturbing Marie. He hoped she'd find another source of possible fulfillment. He didn't need the involvement, thank you, not from Marie, Helen or anyone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In New York, the first frost had come and gone. Frick had been back for well over two months, with no material results to give his superiors concerning the Larson case. Normally, Frick would have taken the abuse and criticism like a good boy, a dutiful, complacent cop who "knows he's done wrong," but something gnawed in the back of his mind. He had talked to Jay Hawkes several times -- and had begun to wonder if he were a nice guy, after all. There was something, somewhere in Hawkes' personality that disturbed Frick. A streak, a trace; it was annoyingly, maddeningly, indefinable, but Frick knew it was there, and would be hit upon only by much thought: hard, deductive thought. And some observation. Hawkes had to be observed in his habit without knowing he was being observed.
Frick had no doubts as to Larson's guilt; it was open and shut, as far as that went. But the thing that had been missing from the beginning was a motive that everyone could agree upon. Mere jealousy seemed a bit trite to Frick, if not downright insufficient. Larson was no madman, given to fits of violent, uncontrollable displays; if anything, he was exactly the converse. It was this fact that made Frick search more deeply, more penetratingly, for an air-tight, universally-agreed-upon-motive. Hell, suppose it was self-defense, he thought. It could be, or couldn't be; but suppose it hinged on something as basic as that.
He meant to find out whether it did.
And in his cop's mind, his detective's instinct told him that the answer to it all simply had to lie somewhere in Hawkes. He had been the friend, the associate; he alone had known the inner life of the Larsons, since Keith had kept pretty much to himself otherwise, especially when his strange illness started -- which, according to Hawkes, had resulted from a slow dose of drugs and arsenic and every other damned thing, administered by Larson to his own person, in an attempt at his life.
Which also struck him as ridiculous.
Larson was not a dolt; he was not an incompetent. If he'd wanted to kill himself, he'd have done the job neatly, quickly, efficiently, with as little fuss as possible. The man was a perfectionist all the way down the line -- and that was another trait that disturbed Frick. If the murder had been premeditated, it would have been done more neatly, with less violence: there probably would have been a total absence of direct contact.
There were holes.
The damned thing was full of holes, and as far as Frick was concerned, a lot of them had to be plugged up with solid answers before he or anyone else could even begin to close the case. Furthermore, in Frick's mind, catching Larson and bringing him back wasn't the solution; sure, the prime suspect would be caught, but the case still wouldn't be solved, unless the prime suspect had a damned good explanation of all the events.
It wasn't that Hawkes was unlikeable or obnoxious -- on the surface, he was nice enough. But there was something down inside, a mild odor that Frick recognized subconsciously, that rang unpleasantly familiar.
It was in Hawkes; and Frick, with native intuition, thought that if he could just dig up that smell and label it, he'd be able to plug up a lot of holes.
The only way to get at a smell was to trace it.
Hawkes would have to be watched, day and night. No one on the force could tail a man in the city like Frick. He knew all the tricks, all the dodges, and he had the uncanny ability of crawling inside the city fugitive's mind and anticipating his moves. But Hawkes was no fugitive, and therefore would not be particularly careful in his actions. He probably wouldn't even be suspicious of someone tailing him.
* * *
Keith had been living with Helen Lord almost as long as Frick had been back in the city. Their relationship had changed, subtly, by degrees, and they were both solemnly aware of the changes taking place, but neither of them acknowledged them to the other. They fought them.
Within themselves, silently, they fought the changes that spelled dependence on one another, involvement with each other's problems and thoughts. In short, they were growing fond of each other: in their minds, dangerously so. Their scars were too fresh, too raw, and they were frightened. Several times, Helen had toyed with the notion of getting Keith out of her life, and more than several times, he had contemplated moving further down the coast, away from her.
But they stayed together.
Same arrangement.
Separate beds, separate thoughts, separate lives: but all weaving unavoidably together, in spite of their defenses against one another, against themselves.
It was happening.
Outside, on the face of things, no one paid much attention to Helen and Keith. He was simply a distant cousin, staying indefinitely in San Luis. They behaved respectably enough. They were seen in town twice a week, on the average; either in the market or the movie theater. Otherwise, they were out on the water, fishing, or swimming nearby. People asked Juan what was happening. Juan simply shrugged his gnarled old shoulders. Quien sabe? Who knows? It was none of his concern; only Marie, his daughter, came within the scope of his protection.
But Juan didn't have control or knowledge of his daughter's mind. At night, when she lay in her bed, feverish and hot with them, she was in a world that didn't include her father.
The thoughts had been building since Keith's arrival.
She lived for the days when she had to go to Helen Lord's cottage to do laundry, or gather laundry, or do housework -- yet, when she arrived, Helen and Keith were always together. And she knew that if she ever went there, and she and Keith were alone, she would shy away, behave like a frightened deer, and the good-looking man would have no desire for her.
Somehow, she had to overcome her shyness, and make herself enticing. But shyness was an ingrained part of her, fortified by her father's protection. He was very strict, her father, very old-fashioned. At eighteen, Marie had never dated without a chaperone present -- -she had never been alone with a man or a boy.
Marie was a virgin!
And oh! how she burned and itched to be rid of it! How she longed to become a woman, and know the sweet pleasures of love! She dwelled on it, was preoccupied with it. Often she would gaze into space, and her father would have to call her several times before she snapped out of her trance, and became aware of his voice.
Senor Keith Larkin.
Ah -- he was handsome, strong, bearded like the pictures of angels she'd seen -- was he in love with Senorita Lord? Likely, if not probable. They did live together, but did not sleep together. Marie knew that simply by the fact of the cot in the living room. That, and the lack of hot looks exchanged by the pair. It was as though they were resisting one another's temptations for each other, purposely torturing themselves. Her father could not read.
Marie had learned to read long ago in the mission school, and entertained, as well as informed her father, by reading him newspapers a couple of days old. In San Luis, there were no current American newspapers available. Only Mexican papers. And they were bad; full of funnies and murders and bullfight news. American papers had advertisements for fine clothes and automobiles, had world news, and gossip about movie stars. Yes, American papers were much finer, and she would read them to her father, every morning over breakfast. Old Juan would get up very early, and go to the marine-supply store that saved papers for him.
And this morning, like any other morning, at six-thirty: "Daughter, read me the paper, please."
She knew he was in a hurry today. The Heron needed some engine work, and they'd be wanting to use it that afternoon.
She thumbed through the paper, looking for a random selection to read about -- it was a San Diego paper.
She came to a selection.
It stopped her heart for a moment.
There was Senor Larkin's picture, beard and all, on page three, only his name was spelled L-A-R-S-O-N in the paper. He had killed his wife in New York, the paper went on to say, and was believed to be somewhere in California -- or possibly had already escaped into Mexico. As she read, Marie recognized the picture with more and more certainty; it was the same man.
The man she wanted to make her a woman. "Why are you taking so long, daughter?" old Juan growled.
"Oh -- here's something," she said, to ease his growing irritation, and hurriedly read something about a movie actor divorcing his old wife, and possibly marrying a new one, his fourth.
"Hmmph. Why do they bother marrying? They live in sin, they insult the institution," the old man said, with a bang of his fist against the table.
Marie read him some more of the paper, studiously skipping the article about Larson. After her father went down to the dock, she threw the paper into the garbage. She wondered how many San Diego papers made their way into San Luis -- and if anyone else would read that article on page 3 and recognize the Senor Larkin. Probably no more than two or three papers, Juan's included. The others possibly, hopefully, would fail to notice the article, and after a while, the issue would cease to interest that city. After all, the senor was from New York, which was far away.
Keith awakened, stretched his body along the length of the cot, and looked at the sun already beginning to pound against the drawn living room curtain.
Another beautiful day.
In San Luis, it was just one beautiful day after another, he thought. You stopped being grateful after a while. He rubbed his eyes, and stretched again. He looked at the bedroom door, still closed. We've been In the same house for three months now, he thought, and that bedroom door stays closed.
In the beginning, Keith had been glad about the arrangement. He hadn't wanted to become involved in any way, not with Helen or any other human being.
But that was the beginning.
It was different, now. Different with him, and with her, as well, he knew.
They had shared too much for it to be otherwise. Then, at the moment of mutual recognition, they had both become reticent and unyielding, and had slumped back into casual, meaningless conversation -- and would be bored, tired, if it weren't for that underlying mutual knowledge of how it really was. Time, he thought. We need time. And then there's my situation -- how could I ask her to take a chance? No, he didn't resent Helen's stubbornness, any more than she resented his. He only resented himself, and the world he lived in.
He got up and made coffee, then went into the John to shower and shave around his beard and brush his teeth. When he came out, Helen was standing there in her robe, looking sleepy, but slept out.
She was waiting her turn in the bathroom.
"Good morning," he said. She reeked pleasantly of sleep, woman's sleep. He wanted to take her in his arms, crush her body against his, and shower her with kisses. Forget about the pain, he'd tell her, let's both forget the pains and the aches and find something new -- but he stood there, waiting for her to answer.
"Good morning, Keith," she said. Was it his imagination, or did her voice sound different? Was it just sleepiness, or was there a special quality, a warmth, maybe -- that had been carefully absent before?
"How'd you sleep?" he asked, waiting for the usual Fine, slept like a log.
"Lousy," she answered, "miserable."
"Me too," he admitted. They looked at each other.
"Something we ate?" she asked, smiling sadly.
"Something eating us," he said. "Something's been eating us for a helluva long time. Hasn't it, Helen?"
"Yes," she said falteringly, "for a long -- long time." Her voice faded against his chest, and became silent while he held her tightly against him, feeling the warmth of her breasts through her robe and nightgown. He stroked her shoulders and back tenderly, fondly, and just held her there, in the doorway of the bathroom.
She stirred slowly, heavily against him.
"This is a hell of a place to make love," she laughed into his chest.
He kissed her ear, and she murmured lazily, passion beginning to rear its head inside her. Yes it was, he agreed, and with his arms still around her, he guided her slowly backward into the bedroom, onto the unmade, still-warm bed.
"Keith--"
"Yeah?" He lay down beside her, held her in his arms, kissed her neck.
"Don't be cute. I couldn't stand it. If this is it, it has to be for keeps -- "
"I know, Helen. I'm in the same boat."
"It has to be for real, Keith."
"I know, damn it, I know." He wanted to cry into her shoulder, Don't you think I've been burned, too? But he was a man, and a man was supposed to feel those things less than a woman. Maybe he wasn't a man; he felt the pain every bit as keenly as a woman would.
"I believe you, Keith. I trust you." And with that, she molded her body into his; her lips sought his hungrily, and found them. Warm, moist flesh teased like flesh. Helen became a live, hungry thing in his embrace; his fingers loosened the sash of her robe, and it fell open -- to reveal the gauze garment beneath that was so transparent as to be non-existent. She bit his ear and moaned repeatedly, "Make it real, make it real, darling!"
Her robe dropped to the floor.
As she moved, slithering across the mattress, her gown slipped up over her thighs, hips and buttocks, and gathered in a roll above her breasts. He brushed at it, and it fell away from her shoulders. She slid it off her neck and pushed it out of the way.
Naked.
He took off his pajama bottoms and took her in his arms again.
"Darling!" she gasped, reaching for him. She felt the urgency in him, the hunger, the need, all of which matched her own, stored up for so long, so needlessly, she thought now, as she heaved herself up and straddled his heaving chest.
His hands reached out for her breasts, and rolled the swollen nipples between his fingers.
"Ooh! My darling!" Her voice swooned, and he felt her thighs and buttocks move down his chest, his stomach -- she poised for a moment in the air, like a hammer ready to strike, and then he felt her join them together. She moved up and down upon him slowly, drinking him in, feasting on the pleasure.
Her eyes smoked over.
Her lips hung loosely, wetly apart.
He lunged up at her, while she moved down at him, her eyes closed now, her face twisted with dreamy languor. Her hands flattened against his chest, then moved away. Helen put her arms behind her, propped her weight upon them, and gripped his sides with her thighs.
He lay on his back, gasping, moving.
"Slow," she panted, "nice -- and -- slow -- " It lasted forever. Forever! They tortured themselves, each other, brought themselves to the very threshold of release, then relaxed. Again and again and again, until it had to be, had to be ended out of sheer physical necessity.
"Now!" she shrieked. Her buttocks slapped against his thighs; he heard the sound of her final, whooshing down-plunge against him, and he clawed at her as spasms racked and shook his body with the death-throes of pleasure.
When it was over, she sat on him, looking down. Her long hair hung over her face, all but shielding her eyes. She smiled. He smiled back, and she moved playfully -- and stirred something in him again. She felt that stirring, and lunged at it, and she fell backward. Keith went to her, grasped her body in his arms, and took it slowly, vigorously, making her moan and whisper as she had not moaned and whispered in a long, long time.
* * *
On a Wednesday, Marie got her chance.
Helen had gone out on the boat with Juan, and Keith had decided to stay home and do some reading; something he hadn't done in a long, long time. Marie was to come in and straighten up a bit.
She tried to contain her eagerness, for fear of rousing her wary father's suspicions. Together, she and Juan went to the house, and had coffee until Helen was ready to go.
She watched Helen kiss Keith good-bye. It was a warm, lingering kiss --- more than you would expect between cousins. She turned away, pretending total involvement with clearing away the dishes from the table.
"Good-bye, darling. We should be back in oh, say four hours. We're going to take her all the way down to Loreto."
"Okay. I'll just stay home and read -- maybe I'll take the car into town later, and nose around."
"Good. It'll do you good to talk to people." Helen and Keith exchanged a meaningful glance, and they kissed again, briefly, and then Keith was alone with Marie.
He drank another cup of coffee in the living room, only dimly aware of the sounds she made in the kitchen while he read. Reading, sleeping, going into town -- all the civilized artifacts of living -- hadn't lost their charm for Keith yet. He was just beginning to accept them as his again.
He hardly ever thought about Marge at all, strangely. She was remote, unreal -- he hardly even remembered how she'd looked. Jay Hawkes was a different matter: every night, that face haunted him, hounded him, made him cry out in his sleep so that Helen awakened and took him into her arms and kissed him until he fell asleep once again. Jay, Jay Hawkes, that rotten, sneaking son of a bitch, who would one day, somehow, some way answer for what he'd done. Yes. If only he could find out what was really going on back there, in New York, in that half-forgotten world -- if only -- Forget it, he told himself savagely. You're free. You know it had to be. They're after your throat, your life, not justice. They've forgotten it -- you forget it, too.
Marie had already noticed the absence of the cot. That meant they were sleeping together, now. Jealous rage awakened inside her, reared its proverbially ugly head in her breast and tormented her. There he sat, reading, not even aware of her presence, while she burned and hungered to be rendered into a woman! It was an absurd, unthinkable fact. It couldn't be!
Not for another minute!
Anger and frustration boiled in her sufficiently to over come habitual shyness. She went into the living room, and glanced over his shoulder. He was reading a book she'd read at the school: Pilgrim's Progress, a book that had bored her to tears, a book she'd read to her father in turn, and which of course had fascinated him with its irrevocable truth and logic. She wondered what he was doing, reading that horrible book. He was no peasant, no pious fool -- "I read that book," she said over his shoulder. Keith put the book in his lap, holding a finger in the place, and smiled.
"Horrible, isn't it?"
"Yes. Why are you reading it?"
"I haven't read it since I was a kid. It's interesting to see how people thought back in those times."
"They still think like that around here," she said heatedly. "My father thinks that way." Keith said nothing.
He was aware that something was different, even wrong, with the way she stood behind him; he could feel her eyes boring holes into his body, could feel her hunger poking inside him. He picked the book up, pretending to be engrossed.
"I read about you this morning, senor," she said quietly. "I know who you are."
Keith put the book down, and turned slowly around to look her full in the face. Helen had said the man at the marine supply store saved two San Diego papers, but she hadn't known who read the other paper. They were the only two that ever got into town. Now he knew who the other paper belonged to.
"And?" he asked, his voice edged with challenge.
Then: "I can have you arrested."
"We both know that. How much money do you want?" His voice was no longer pleasant; it was flatly hostile. Little bitch, he thought, out to gouge my wallet.
"No money!" she flushed, "It is not money I want! I -- want to be a woman," she stammered, no longer completely sure of herself, but sure only of the situation: that she had Keith Larson by the short hairs.
"A woman?"
"I want you to make me a woman," she said more animatedly, the words rushing forward. "I am a virgin. I have heard that men prefer virgins."
"Marie," he said softly, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, "I think you're lovely, beautiful, and charming. But I'm in love with a woman, don't you see? I couldn't betray her trust. If you were in love, would you want your man to betray you?"
"I don't care!" she pouted. "Either you make me a woman, or I'll call the Mexican authorities. They'll take you back."
Yes, he thought, they certainly will. And if Juan catches us at it, he'll murder me in my sleep -- and he remembered Helen's words, Don't be cute. I couldn't stand it. If this is it, it has to be for keeps -- and during their heated act, Make it real, make it real, darling.
"You ask me to cheat the woman I love?"
"She is a tramp. She has been married -- she has had affairs," Marie said hotly.
"You have a lot to learn about life, little one. You're not ready to become a woman yet."
"Then I will call the authorities," she said adamantly. And Keith realized, with a sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach, that she would.
"All right," he sighed. Even at that moment, he was struck by the theatrics of the situation: Marie was as enticing a wench as you could ask for, and an untouched one at that. But the thing facing him struck him as a chore, a curse, rather than anything resembling pleasure. He had no enthusiasm for the task.
"In the bedroom," she said, "I want it to be on a large, soft bed. That is how I always imagined it -- " Here goes, he thought.
She stood there, shyly.
"Well?" he challenged. "Come on, you're calling the shots." He saw that she was afraid, shy. "Well come on! Get undressed."
Slowly, her hand raised to her throat, lingering on the top button of the blouse she wore.
Keith stood there. He would have been thoroughly amused, had it not been for what was at stake: his life.
"You undress me," she said softly. The chick knew what she wanted -- she had the whole thing down to a formula, a rather standard, hackneyed one at that.
He unbuttoned her blouse, and she shrugged it off her shoulders, her face flushed. His fingers unsnapped her brassiere, and her young, untouched breasts tumbled out, twin spheres of pink-nippled perfection.
When he touched a nipple, she winced with pleasure, and closed her eyes -- the long black lashes fluttered spasmodically.
He found the button of her skirt, and pulled it over her head, then peeled her panties off. Finally, she moved to step out of her shoes, and she stood before him, a picture of perfect femininity. In spite of his anger, worry and amusement, Keith found himself becoming more than mildly interested. There was nothing boring about Marie's body.
He undressed with a casual, almost bored gesture, and when he turned to face her, her eyes raked his body with open curiosity.
"I have never seen a grown man naked before," she gasped.
"You see one now," he said. "I hope you're not disappointed."
"No! Oh no!"
He put his arms around her, picked her up, and lay her on the bed. Her copper-toned body glistened beckoningly against the white sheet -- he lay down beside her, and began the love-play.
The girl stirred fitfully as he touched her and caressed her, covering her inexperienced, eager body with kisses. Her nipples filled out and swelled under the gentle pressures of his lips; her loins warmed as he touched the secret places of her, and soon, very soon, Marie was no longer a girl at all, but a panting, thrashing, moaning woman reverberating with passion and long pent-up desire.
Keith knew every step of the way.
Like an instrument, he played her, reaching for unusually intense tonal effects. His hands scorched her, his lips burned her, and his body made her body sing with ecstasy. He probed her gently, and shot impulses of pain and pleasure through her untouched depths.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
"Yes," she said through clenched, white teeth, "but it doesn't matter." He increased the probing, and she spread her lovely thighs for him, biting her lower lip to choke off the sounds that threatened to burst through her teeth. He pushed gently, slowly, but insistently, determined to smash through the defense that she wanted to be rid of.
Marie writhed with pain, but determined to see it out, knowing that it would hurt, but after that: pleasure. He made her touch him.
"I'm frightened!" she exclaimed. "It will kill me, I will bleed."
"You'll bleed, but it won't kill you," he muttered, still angry, but thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. Her body was firm and young, soft and hot, wanting and afraid. A paradox of all the ingredients peculiar to young virgin girls anxious to be free of the girlish curse.
She felt pillows being stuffed under her heart-shaped buttocks, and felt him before she saw him hovering above her, propped on his elbows.
Her body seethed with the heat and desire he had generated with his fingers, his lips, his body -- she was ready, oh yes, ready now, for the final plunge that would make her a woman forever.
She felt him.
Her thighs spread, arched high and she felt him, pushing, probing, smashing, in pain himself from the horrid resistance her flesh offered.
It hurt.
Mother of God, but it hurt!
"No!" she screamed. "It is too painful!"
"Easy," he coaxed, "easy, it'll hurt for a while, but then -- " he pushed violently, and she felt something break inside of her -- And little by little, it stopped hurting, and the first pangs of pleasure worked inside her body. She moved rhythmically to meet the pleasure. Her hips rose to meet his, her buttocks retreating softly into the cushion that the pillows offered. His hands grasped her hips and showed them how to move with his, and she swam in a sea of undreamed-of pleasure. Her wildest fantasies hadn't told her it was going to be this good!
He brought her to unbridled ecstasy time and time again, until she lay panting and sobbing against him. She hurt between the legs, he had taken her so many times. The mattress held her back, and she closed her eyes, satisfied, a woman now, wondering whether she really would have turned Keith Larson in if he hadn't complied with her hot desires.
In all probability, she would have.
"We can never make love again," he told her. "You're a woman now. You don't have to come to me for instruction."
"Yes," she said. "Now, I will have other young men. You have put me in a new world -- thank you."
"You're entirely welcome," he said, getting up to dress and straighten the bed. "If you turn me in now, it's on your conscience!"
"Was she a bad woman, your wife?"
"As bad as Senorita Helen is good," he told her. "You would have killed her yourself -- when you live a little, you'll find these things out."
Four hours later, just as Helen had predicted, they returned to find Keith alone. Marie had painfully, uncertainly made her way home, and Keith had gotten rid of the evidence. He waited for Juan to leave before he spoke to her.
"How's the boat?" he asked.
"Fine. How are you?" She offered her lips up to be kissed, and he kissed them gently, without fervor.
"Something's wrong," she said simply.
"Yeah. Your shy little errand girl, Marie. I just took her to bed."
Helen laughed.
"What's really wrong?" she asked.
"You heard right; I took her to bed and made her stagger home, she was so damned sore. She wanted me to make her into a woman. Oh, I didn't have to. I could've been a real stoic about it, and let her report me to the Mexican authorities. She read the paper, that San Diego scandal sheet."
"So that's who gets the other paper," Helen said. "Tell me, Keith, was it fun? Marie, I mean."
"Fun and games," he said. "I wasn't going to tell you -- the whole time, I remembered your words from the time we first made love, and -- it wasn't much fun at all, baby."
"Poor Keith. Poor darling," she crooned, cradling his head in her arms, "has to initiate young girls, never gets left alone. How about retraining an old girl?" She brushed his thigh with her fingers.
"You're not --?"
"Mad? How can I be? It's too hilarious for words." And she broke into genuine, uproarious laughter.
"Damn, that's funny. I thought I was sick, but you know, the whole time, when she was all shy and everything -- you know -- you were a virgin once -- I wanted to laugh. I thought I was perverted. The poor kid was really burning up."
"But you put the fire out, I'll bet."
"She seemed happy. Sore, but happy. I told her not to bother for an encore; now she's armed to go out after other game."
"If I told her father, that'd fix her good," Helen said.
"It would fix me, too, baby. He'd probably castrate me in my sleep. And come to think of it, that'd fix you too, wouldn't it?"
"Ugh! Yes."
"Did you say you wanted re-training?" He sneered playfully, parodying an old, false-toothed lecher, poking at her with wizened, gnarled fingers. "Heh, heh? Huh? Want some re-training, do ye, girlie?"
Helen cackled wildly, running into the bedroom, flinging off clothes as she went.
"God, this bed's a wreck! You sure it was just you and Marie?"
"You're vulgar."
"You're nice."
"I'll be nicer if you let me forget the incident -- and if she doesn't go rat on me to the cops."
"Rest assured, she won't. Juan'll see to it, after I tell it to him. Juan lives very, very well, darling, and I am his General Motors: the barometer of his economic sphere. Sweat it not."
"Talk to me."
"Make love to me, unless you're too weak."
"Persuade me."
"Like this?" she touched him.
"Umm," he murmured.
"Or would' you prefer -- this?" Her lips bathed him, surrounded him; he watched her head move up and down through half-closed eyes.
"Umm," he moaned.
She grunted, and consumed him rhythmically, slowly, knowingly. When he took her, it was with gusto; their bodies shivered together and moved across the bed in frantic chase. Keith was his old, hungry self.
* * *
Lieutenant Frick was a patient man, capable of infinite waiting, but now even his fortitude was being put to a serious test. Jay Hawkes seemed to do disgustingly normal things, to maintain a disgustingly normal schedule, except for the whirlwind cocktail parties. But, through channels, devious, better-unmentioned channels.
Frick got the inside track on Hawkes. The rumor went something like this: everyone had known of his affair with Marge Larson except for her husband, Keith. One night, Hawkes had gotten thoroughly, profoundly drunk, and had mentioned things about Marge slowly drugging and poisoning her husband, at Hawkes' insistence. She was giving him arsenic and benzedrene, tiny doses, enough to kill him slowly -- and to make it more clever and fun, she'd been swiping his watch, his brushes, making him think he was losing his mind. And by God, it'd worked beautifully. That night, when Hawkes was said to have shot off his mouth, he'd predicted another month at the most before Larson either died or went insane and had to be committed to a mental hospital. Far-fetched. Way out. Weird.
But Frick was ready for any straw, however slender and breakable. Now, let's just suppose there's some truth in this, he reasoned: wouldn't it figure that if Larson categorically refused to die, that Hawkes and lovely Marge would get impatient? Very impatient? Two lovers, burning for each other, desperate enough to do anything just to get together, even desperate enough to speed an interfering husband on his way?
Could be -- could very well be.
The more Frick toyed with the conjecture, the more it appealed to him. It was unspeakably dirty, even filthy. It had all the qualities of sneakiness, perverse sadism and conspiracy -- things you didn't get very often in a murder case. Hell, this put the thing far above a mere murder of passion, lousy third-degree stuff, second-degree if the lawyer stunk and the jury was ready to hang the guy before the trial even started.
There was drama here.
But, still, it was conjecture -- hearsay, rumor. The cop's pragmatism and pessimism came to rescue Frick just in time from the point of no return in what promised to be one beautiful fantasy.
He had to prove it.
Frick could never be at his creative best in the stifling atmosphere of headquarters. The precinct was for bureaucrats, strictly. He called in and said he was going home, he had some thinking to do. Give the message to Smith, the precinct captain, his immediate superior.
Home -- a rye on the rocks -- a quiet room. All very necessary for Frick when he was lost in thought, when he was really being a detective. Every now and then, he referred to his volume of Sherlock Holmes, not for the cases, but for the reasoning. It was one of the laughs at the station. But over the years, he'd found the grand old man more than helpful.
The grand old man wasn't being much help tonight, however. Long after Frick had put the book away, and long after he'd turned out the light to go to sleep, the idea came to him. It snapped him out of his sleep; it jarred every moving muscle and bone in his body. He leaped out of bed and threw on his clothing, ran downstairs and looked for a cab. None in sight. He ran upstairs and phoned the station for a squad car to come pick him up. Nervously, impatiently, chewing his cud, Frick waited for the car to come get him.
* * *
This time, she was a redhead.
Hawkes had gotten wind of her through a man who knew a man who knew a man who knew Carol -- that was the redhead's name. Carol, according to Hawkes' contact, was one of the best girls in the city; not only the most beautiful, the most experienced -- but something else, something very unusual in a call-girl: she liked sex. She lived for sex; experimental, way-out sex. Just hearing about her made Hawkes' blood boil, and by the time he had heard several descriptions of Carol, he was willing to pay, and pay well.
And Carol, accordingly, charged and charged high.
"Four hundred bucks is the price," the contact told Jay over the phone.
"Four hundred!" Hawkes exploded. "Who the hell is she, a twenty-year-old Garbo?"
"Not far from it, boy. Carol's twenty-two, and if you can afford her, it's worth every penny."
"Well--damn it, all right," Hawkes consented. "When can she come see me?"
"Tonight. She'll want cash as soon as she walks in the door."
"She'll have it," Hawkes answered snappishly.
Jay hung the receiver up, and lit a cigarette. Four bills, for God's sake! A lot of coins. But if what he'd heard about Carol was true, then she'd be worth it -- he would have found what he was looking for: someone willing to do anything for sheer need's sake.
He'd come so close with Marge -- so very close.
But now he had to wait the day out for Carol, the redhead.
The day came and went, and at eight-thirty in the evening, Carol the redhead did in fact come to Hawkes' apartment. She rang his buzzer, which he answered with furiously beating heart.
She was something, all right.
Big-hearted, exaggeratedly curved and swollen throughout -- red hair framing her large-boned, Scandinavian face. A walking burlesque on femininity; the way he liked them. Big, strong, built, with snapping, suggestive eyes and sensuous mouth. Ah!
"Carol?"
"Yes. Jay? Four hundred dollars, please." He gave it to her at the door. She tucked the bills inside a very expensive looking purse, and came in, kicking the door closed behind her. "You wouldn't have a drink, would you?"
"Sure I would. What'd you like?"
"Vodka, straight, with a little ice."
"Wow! Okay, if that's really your drink." He went to the bar to get it for her, while she stood in the living room, looking intently around her.
"Nice place you have," she said.
"Thanks. I like it." He handed the drink to her, and watched her toss it down like water. No grimace, no face, no nothing -- like she'd swallowed mountain air.
"Where would you like to make love?" she asked. It was a matter-of-fact question, asked in a husky, even anxious tone of voice, sufficient to get Jay's blood up to the boiling point.
"The bedroom's fine," he answered; and started in that direction while she followed him.
"I hope you're as excited as I am!" she said breathily. "I've heard some marvelous things about you."
"Oh?"
"Yes -- I hear you like to do delicious things." She dragged out delicious until Hawkes thought he'd die. Even her voice and her words were getting to him. He had the wonderful feeling that he was going to get more than his money's worth.
She undressed him, slowly, running her hands up and down his body as she worked. Her hands glided beneath clothing, touching naked, sensitive places. She knelt down to untie his shoes, while he felt increasingly weak in the knees.
He felt her kiss him -- And almost crumpled into a heap of boneless flesh.
She undressed herself, revealing her body slowly, torturously so -- one breast at a time, one leg at a time, and so on, until after what seemed an eternity of time, she stood before him in all her naked splendor.
She reached into her purse and extracted a black patent leather belt.
"Here," she said, handing it to him, "beat me thoroughly. I love it." Without another word, she slumped to her knees and threw her torso across the bed, her legs on the floor, in an attitude of abject waiting. Jay trembled, swung the belt over his head and let it come down on her massive, pear-shaped, white buttocks. Snap!
"Oooh! It hurts!"
He swung faster, until the snapping of patent leather against yielding woman's flesh became a staccato sound throughout the confines of the bedroom. Snap-snap-snap! She wriggled her buttocks from side to side, and Jay saw her dig her fingers into the coverlet on the bed, a sure sign of pain; she howled and begged and called him master, darling, her strong lover -- and he grew warmer and dizzier with lust as he beat her.
Hell, she's loving it, he thought. Loving it!
He let the belt snap against the backs of her thighs, behind her knees, up to the reddened buttocks again, her body a chaos of white flesh and pink welts.
Dropping the belt, he grasped her buttocks and lifted her so that she lay sprawled across the mattress, her legs hanging over the side. His hands forced her thighs apart, but he noticed a hesitant willingness on her part. He stood back, and looked.
It would hurt her.
It would probably make her moan and scream with unbridled pain. Yes, he'd do it -- he'd always wanted to do it to a woman with buttocks like those.
She felt him close to her.
His legs brushed her legs as he stood between them, moving horribly closer; his hands clasped her shoulders now -- his stomach touched her flesh.
"Ahh! Pleeease!" she gasped through clenched teeth as he forced his will upon her protesting flesh. He pushed and grunted, digging his nails into her shoulders and lifting them off the mattress as he drove himself to her protesting, forbidden flesh. With savage glee, he clamped her thighs shut and lunged bull-like back and forth until she beat the mattress with her fists. He was drunk with power, crazed with lust, and she felt him shudder. And, for a time, it was over. Thank God, she thought -- this was a helluva way to earn money.
Afterward, they got into bed and talked.
Carol guided the conversation carefully. Hawkes could see how intent she was on the themes of cruelty and violence; it worked his blood up just to answer her questions -- made him dizzy with ecstasy.
"I bet you could kill someone and enjoy it," she said, with an awe-struck tone.
"Already have," he said, his chest swelling beneath the covers.
"Come on!" she scoffed.
"Sure -- remember that Larson business? Me and her almost killed her husband together -- you could see him dying slow, real slow. He squirmed with agony! Thought he was losing his mind, having heart attacks. Only Marge goofed."
Carol held her breath.
Jay really had her excited; he could see that quite plainly. He continued, his head light.
"What happened?" she asked anxiously.
"Well, it backfired, and Keith strangled her when he found out the plan that we'd been working for so many months -- he just cracked up completely, and I kind of wanted Marge. She was a lot like you. Hip."
"Too bad," Carol said. Something about her voice -- Hawkes looked at her. All enthusiasm had gone from her voice. She looked at him coldly.
"Hey, what's the matter?" he asked, puzzled by the sudden switch.
"Something stinks, that's what's the matter." Lieutenant Frick stepped into the bedroom, holding a pistol on Hawkes. "Something smells so bad, that I might puke right on your bedroom floor -- but that wouldn't matter, would it, Jay? I mean, you'll never see this nice plush little palace of yours again."
Hawkes sputtered.
"Goddamn it, you can't prove a thing! This isn't even legal evidence!"
"Legal enough: Carol's a cop, and after what she just went through, she'll get a month's leave," Frick answered disgustedly. "And we've got all the warrants we need. Better get dressed, old friend, and come with us."
And so it happened that Jay Hawkes, self-contained, debonair soul that he was, broke down under Frick's expert questioning, and admitted the whole thing. He was made to see that he had no discernible chances of lying his way out of it, as the whole conversation with Carol was on tape; and that Keith Larson's neighbors could attest to the fact that Jay came quite often; and that Jay's neighbors could attest to the fact that Marge had spent a long, lovely afternoon in his apartment. It was airtight; at least Hawkes got that horrible impression, and as a result, shot away while the stenographer calmly took down his confession.
Frick had his motive.
He still didn't have the murderer. Like all good cops, he knew a few legalities as well, and from experience knew that Keith Larson, with a good lawyer, could get off on self-defense, justifiable homicide, or at worst, manslaughter, good for five years with time off -- which, worked correctly, meant six months in prison and four years parole. He was relieved to know it, because without ever having met Larson, Frick felt that he was a nice guy.
Nice guy.
Frick laughed softly to himself, and got ready to go home. It'd been a long, nasty night.
* * *
Keith heard about Hawkes' arrest and confession a week later, getting a two-day-old San Diego paper and reading the entire thing. It had created a furor throughout the country. Sympathy suddenly ran overwhelmingly in his favor; the press felt sorry for him; a St. Louis editor was even quoted as having publicly apologized for his rough treatment of Keith Larson's character in print.
Helen read the long article.
"Your move," she said. "You can take your chances and go back, or you can sit pretty here for the rest of your life."
"There's only one thing I can do," he answered. "We both know what it is."
"Yes."
"Helen."
"Yes, Keith?"
"You'll come with me, won't you? It might be a long trial; I'll need you there with me."
Helen's eyes lit up; she smiled for the first time. "Of course I'll come with you," she said, and leaned across his chair to kiss him. She fell into his arms, and Keith moved her skirt up over her hips, as her legs melted warmly into his --
* * *
The verdict was justifiable homicide. Keith was a free man. A man who couldn't quite believe his freedom, freedom to go anywhere, do anything, until his lawyer physically punched him on the shoulder.
"You are free, Keith. You've been found innocent of criminal homicide."
And on the surface of things, that was it.
Jay Hawkes was given life imprisonment, with no possibility of parole. Keith and Helen were married in the chapel in San Luis, and after a year of making old contacts come alive again, Keith got busy working on book and magazine illustrations again. He and Helen had to enlarge the house considerably -- add two more bedrooms, and a large studio. They even added a patio. They bought a second place in San Francisco, an apartment that they spent two months out of the year in. Keith made new contacts, talked to other writers and artists, and got back into the swim of things. Helen shopped for things she couldn't buy in San Luis.
And you'd have to say they lived happily ever after, wouldn't you?
But happiness is not bliss.
Keith and Helen were careful with one another. From past experience, they worked hard at building their relationship into an indestructible tower of strength: of love and mutual respect. They never let up for a minute. To most "happy" couples, it would be a chore -- but for Helen and Keith, it was a chance to start all over again.
San Luis, Baja California, at night, presents one of the most magnificent stretches of landscape and water in the world; for mile after mile, you see living testimony of how beautiful something can remain when undiscovered or unwanted by man.
San Luis, Baja California.
The home of Keith and Helen Larson.
The place that eventually will heal them both, make them forget that ugly thing behind them: the past.
Now, there is just the present, the future, and everything that can fall between. Helen and Keith both know that an awful lot can fill those moments -- a lot of good things.
