Hard Case Crime: The Vengeful Virgin (18 page)

“It can wait.” She was already starting to unbutton her dress between her breasts, watching me. She paused. “Are you sorry about anything, Jack? I mean, about what we’ve done?”

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

We moved into the bedroom. I yanked the spread back and looked at the bed. It was made up and it looked clean. I saw no bugs or insects in the room. The guy I’d rented the cabin from said he kept it for fishermen mostly, but that it was always ready to be rented to anyone who wanted it.

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a fireplace in the living room. Why not start a fire, and be real cozy?”

“It’s pretty warm for a fire.”

“It’ll be chilly tonight.”

I looked at her and grinned. “I’ll bet.”

She pouted. “Please. I’d like a fire. We could have a fire, and close all the windows and doors, and be cozy in the firelight.”

“Now?”

She breathed it. “Yes. Now. It’ll be better. I promise. We don’t have to hurry.”

I went on outside. I started looking for wood, but somehow I ended up over by the car. I took her bags inside, and then came back and got the shiny white leather suitcase. I got that chill on the back of my neck again. I took it inside. She was in the bedroom. I set the suitcase on a chair, and stood there staring at it.

She came out of the bedroom, carrying a big pile of blankets.

“You get the wood?”

“I will.

She frowned as she saw me staring at the money bag.

“Come on, Jack.”

I went out. I didn’t even ask her what the blankets were for. I got some wood together, mostly pine, so it would burn easily, and went back inside again. I was beginning to feel tired. We were remote from everything, and I couldn’t fasten on to what we had done. We were just here, that’s all.

Then I’d think of that money. The chill.

She had the blankets spread all around the floor in front of the fireplace. I dumped the wood in a box, and set the fire with some old newspapers underneath the wood. It caught quickly, and the room became a chimera of fire and shadow. It changed the cabin. She was right. It was good.

She still had her clothes on, with some of the buttons of her dress undone, the round thrust of her breasts showing.

“We forgot to get anything in to eat.”

“There are some cans in the kitchen,” she said. “Not much, but it’ll do. Don’t you think?”

“Sure.”

She moved into my arms, and it started. We didn’t get our clothes off right then, either. It was as if she wanted to devour me. I’d never seen anything like it. She was wild. It got me, and we were both swept up in it, a kind of orgy of flesh. And, like always, the pallor of her body seemed to make it stronger somehow. She moaned. She didn’t hold back. I saw that she had been holding back the other times. She talked wildly, yelled, and writhed like the flames of hell.

“I won’t worry about that Grace anymore,” she said once. Then another time, “This! This is for the money. For the money. This!”

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

It was dark and the fire had died down to red embers before we rested much. Then we just lay there and she had been right about everything. It was good with the fire. The cabin was warm, and it smelled of her perfume, mingled with burning pine.

“You’re a mess,” I said.

“You made me that way.”

Her aqua dress was all roped up around her middle, and her hair was snarled, and she just lay there, like some glorious whore, glorifying her whoring, happy as hell.

I went over and put some more wood on the fire.

When I turned around, she was naked, lying there on the blankets.

“Get the money, Jack.”

I didn’t say anything. I turned like a hound on the scent. I got the money bag and brought it back.

“Where’s your purse?”

“Over there on the table.”

I got the key from her purse and unlocked the white leather bag.

“Pour it out,” she said. “Here.” She slapped the blanket between us.

I opened the white bag and turned it upside down. The money fell there on the blanket between us, piling up and piling up. I threw the small suitcase across the room, and knelt looking at it.

“It kind of makes you crazy,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Undress,” she said. “Like me. Take your shirt off.”

I undressed all the way to make her happy, then we lay there, and looked at the money. The firelight was high now, and the flames danced across the ceiling and played like thin wicked fingers across the pile of money.

“Let’s take all the paper bands off,” she said. “It’ll look like more. Jesus, Jack—just look at it, will you?”

I felt a little crazy, right then. I couldn’t help it. Over three hundred thousand dollars, and all mine.

Right there on the floor. I could touch it, and run my hands through it.

“Fun,” she said.

“Yeah.” My throat was dry.

I looked at her. Her breasts stood out and she sort of sprawled around, stripping the paper bands off packets of the money. There were all denominations. Tens. Twenties. Fifties. Hundreds. There were lots more hundreds than anything else. I helped her. She was a lot steadier than I was. I was sweating to beat the band, stripping those packets.

Then we had this pile of money on the blanket. I couldn’t say anything. I knew I would have yelled, or something.

“Just think,” she said. “It was all mine. Only now it’s ours. I mean, if I hadn’t met you, Jack, I’d still be back there feeding Victor his oxygen and secretly burning up inside.”

“But it’s not that way, so don’t think of it.”

Shirley knelt by the money. She reached into it with both fists and tossed it into the air, and watched it flutter down.

“Think of all the things we can do,” she said.

“I am.”

I lay there, watching her. She was beautiful, Christ, they didn’t come any more beautiful than Shirley Angela. Kneeling there with that big pile of money, and the firelight playing across her body, breasts, hip and thigh, her flesh sheened a little with perspiration from the heat so it mirrored the flames—there was never anything like it.

She saw the way I looked at her and laughed happily. She stood up, swaying her hips and shoulders in the firelight, then went into a little dance, playing her body against the fire and the shadows.

She came by me and I tripped her. I grabbed her and kissed her and she was hot all over.

“Jack,” she said. “I’m so happy. I love you so!”

“Prove it.”

She eyed me. “With pleasure!”

We rolled around in that money, loving it up, like a couple of swine, and this time there was nothing slow about anything. It was like that time on the kitchen floor, at her house. Only it was better. It was the best.

After a while, we went into the kitchen, and opened a couple cans of stuff. We ate that, and I made some coffee.

“We’ll have to get some groceries,” I said.

“How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“I don’t know.” And I didn’t, then.

Next day it was the same.

About noon, it was, we packed the money away in the suitcase. We were out of cigarettes, so I said I’d drive over to Wilke’s Corners.

“Be careful.”

“Don’t worry.”

I went over and bought groceries, and cigarettes, and two bottles of whisky. Everything went smoothly. I listened to the car radio, but I didn’t get anything about us. It was almost too quiet.

When I got back, Shirley had found a radio under the bed and she was listening to it in the living room. She was wearing a red housecoat, and that was all.

“Hi,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me.

“Hey, there,” I said.

She looked up at me and smiled hesitantly. I went into the kitchen and put the stuff away, and poured a drink.

“You want a drink?” I said.

“No.”

I didn’t like the way she said that. She was acting strange.

Then she said. “Did it go all right?”

“It went perfect.”

“That’s good.”

“No questions, nothing. I didn’t talk to anybody but the grocery clerk, and the guy over at the bar. There was nobody in the bar.”

“Oh.”

“Something the matter?”

“Oh, no.”

I drank the drink. I had another. Then another. I felt it right away, and it felt good, so I had another. I went in and sat down in a chair across from where she was on the couch. She flipped the radio off and looked at me. We watched each other.

“Happy?” she said.

“Sure. You?”

She looked at her lap, then at me, then she nodded.

“Isn’t much to do around here,” I said.

She turned her head away.

“You know what I mean,” I said quickly. “Only we can’t take off. It’s a shame, in a way. All that dough, and no place to spend it. Wouldn’t you like to spend it?”

“Anything you like is all right with me.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t it stir you up?”

“Not particularly. I’ve been awfully happy here, Jack.”

“Well, I am, too.”

We didn’t speak for a time.

“You hungry?” I said.

“Not right now.”

I was feeling the whisky good. I went into the kitchen and had another.

“Sure you don’t want a drink?”

She hesitated. “Maybe just a little one.”

I poured her a little one and took it in to her, and watched her sip at it. She watched me over the rim of the glass. I started back to the chair, and my gaze got stuck on that white leather bag with the money in it.

I got that chill.

I turned and went outside.

“Where you going?”

“Be right back.”

I went to the car. In the back of my mind there was always that threat, that they knew, and they were trying to find us. I had it all worked out, how as soon as I figured things had cooled down, we’d get out of here, get another car—steal one—and take a plane somewhere. Somewhere in the Southwest, maybe. And from there we would fly to Europe. I’d have to get papers rigged, but I knew I could do that. I could do anything with that money.

Only right now, there was the threat hanging over my head. I opened the glove compartment, and took out the P-38, and the shells. I loaded the gun, and put the shells back in the glove compartment. I took the gun inside and laid it on the mantel over the fireplace. I felt better.

“What’s that for? I didn’t know you had a gun.”

I had a good edge.

“I just feel better with it in here. Bought it the other day. You never know.”

“I don’t like guns around, Jack.”

“Well, it won’t bite you.”

I went over and stood in front of her. One of her breasts was bare outside the red housecoat. I don’t know. We’d been at it and at it, and she was terrific, but there was that money. And the getting away. And the knowing they were out there someplace, looking.

“You’re pretty, you know it?” I said.

“Am I?”

“Yeah. There’s nobody I’d rather be with.”

“Am I really pretty?”

She opened the housecoat and lay back on the couch.

She kept at me and kept at me, all day long. It was like some kind of marathon. And after a while you can wear anything pretty thin. It might have been different if we were in that big hotel down in Rio. But somehow, here, you were always listening. There would be the pulsing of the river, and the sound of the pines, and you would try to listen above that. Straining. Just a little bit.

But she was at me every minute.

Middle of the night.

“Tell me you love me.”

I told her a few times. I started to go to sleep, telling her, mumbling and drifting off. I came awake fast, with a yell. She was kneeling there beside me, beating me with both fists, her face all wrung up, shouting it at me.

“Tell me you love me! Tell me you love me!”

I took her in my arms. “Would I be here if I didn’t love you?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“We didn’t do anything tonight. We just came to bed.”

“Well, for cripes’ sake.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah.”

She rolled over, with her back to me. “Nothing.”

I lay there staring at the dark. You could hear the river pulsing, and the trees moaning. The fire had died down in the other room. There was a lingering acrid odor of stale pine smoke.

“Shirley?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Shirley, what was it? What did you want to say?”

“Nothing. I told you. Nothing.”

I lay there. She didn’t move. Neither did I.

“Come on,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer.

I thought after a while she went to sleep. I finally slid quietly out of bed and went into the kitchen. I didn’t turn on any lights. I got the bottle, and took a long drink. I carried the bottle into the other room, and sat down on the floor, on a blanket, and pulled down the white leather bag. I opened it; looked at the money.

Every time. The same thing.

I took a drink and looked at the money.

I sat there until the bottle was empty. I was drunk as all hell. I sat there staring at the money. I grabbed the bills in my hands and crunched them together in wads. They were crisp.

I got up and staggered over to the fireplace and put a log on the irons. It flamed up. I came back and sat with the money, looking at it, counting it.

I got that crazy feeling again.

Maybe we’d never get away. Maybe we’d be stuck here forever, or maybe they would get us. And we would never have a chance to spend any of it, live the high life, what I had wanted ever since I could remember.

I was really crocked.

Right now, the way things were, with the law alerted, the two of us could never make it.

But maybe I could make it alone.

I looked at the money. I guess that was the first time I had really thought about killing Shirley Angela.

Only I knew I could never kill her.

I just thought about it. How it would be. But I knew I couldn’t ever kill anybody. I knew that. Big brave me.

“Jack?”

I looked up. Shirley stood there watching me in the firelight. She was naked. I thought how it would be and knew it was crazy and that I could never do it. She swam around in my vision.