Hard Case Crime: The Vengeful Virgin (8 page)

“I’ll go crazy.”

“No, you won’t.”

It wasn’t easy, the way she paraded around the rest of the day. She had on a pair of white shorts and a white sweater. The only thing that kept me from busting a seam was the thought of what we’d have when it was all over.

I explained to Victor how the unit in his room worked. He got a kick out of it. He was like a kid.

“All you have to do is flip that switch, and talk,” I told him. “Simple.”

“Maybe you’re not such a son of a bitch, after all, Ruxton,” he said, grinning up at me. There were little dabs of bright red coloring on his cheeks today, and his eyes were bright. He looked over where she was standing at the foot of the bed, by those feet. “Shirley,” he said. “Honey, you go out in the kitchen and listen for me. Say something.”

She did. It went on that way. He kept her jumping and pretty well tied up, talking nonsense from one room to the other, playing radio announcer, and imitating Jack Benny.

Like a kid, he was.

Just the same, he was going to die.

All the time I worked, I kept going over and over every point on the program. I examined each point from all angles. It occurred to me that Victor would want to show Miraglia how the intercoms worked. Shirley would have to go along with that and show some excitement. I told her, and she okayed it.

While I was out back putting up the two PA speakers, one on the coconut palm and the other on the side of the house, somebody called.

“Hello, handsome.”

It was Mayda Lamphier, over in her yard, beyond the hedge. I nodded and kept working. She stood there for a while, wanting to say something. She gave it up, and went inside her house.

I put the speakers down just low enough so Shirley could reach the volume controls.

We had to move his bed so I could fasten the TV set on the ceiling. I worked with a ladder, with him lying in bed, watching. I got the set up there with a sling hoist, and bolted it to brackets fastened through the ceiling to rafters.

Shirley kept saying, “Are you all right, Mr. Ruxton? Can I help you, Mr. Ruxton?”

I just grunted.

When I finished, I was knocked out, but it was up there to stay. You could chin yourself on it, if you wanted, it was that solid. There was a fair picture even without the antenna, so we rolled his bed over into place and let him watch some local hillbilly program. He seemed happy.

Outside, she held the ladder while I headed for the roof with the antenna.

“He can have two days to play around,” I said. “Will the doctor be here by then?”

“He comes tomorrow.”

“Good; then Victor can put on an exhibition with the intercoms and get that out of his system. He can have tomorrow and the next day—then I’m coming to fix the condenser.”

“How will I make him think something’s wrong?”

“I’ll show you,” I told her. “You’ll pull the main light switch, and knock everything out.”

She didn’t say anything. I looked at her and got that feeling. She was staring at me, with her eyes hot, her teeth tight together, and her lips parted a little.

She spoke softly. “I want to see you, Jack.”

“Yeah.”

“What will we do?”

“I don’t know.”

It was hell, what she did to me. She was right there, asking for it. And I could have her, only I couldn’t have her. She pushed against the edge of the ladder and said, “Jesus, Jack. What will we do?”

“We’ll have to wait,” I said. “You’ll have to be here when the doctor comes tomorrow. I want to know everything they do and say.”

“All right. But, I can’t wait, Jack. I’m burning up.”

“We’ve got to wait. You think it’s easy for me?”

She just watched me. Her look really got me. I went up the ladder fast, and put up the antenna, a double V, and fixed the lead. Then I came down and went in to see how Victor was making out.

“He’s sleeping,” she said. “He always naps along about now. He’ll sleep for at least fifteen minutes.”

Her eyes were foggy.

“Where’s the fuse box? There’s time to show you.”

I followed her out through the kitchen, watching the way she moved under those tight white shorts. The fuse box was in a utility room off the back of the house. There was a lot of junk in the room; a wicker clothes hamper, electric hot-water heater, washing machine, some garden tools, and an electric lawn mower. There was a big pile of clothes on the floor.

I showed her the switch and told her to pull it the first thing in the morning, three days from now, and then phone me at the store.

I turned on the light in the utility room, then pulled the main switch, to show her how everything went off. Then I turned the juice back on, and turned off the light.

“Jack?”

The utility room door was partially closed. We were in shadow. I turned when she spoke, hearing the way she breathed. It was like being dragged fast through a knot hole. She had peeled off those shorts and she wanted to make sure I knew it.

I held her and she squirmed and panted. “I couldn’t wait, Jack. I couldn’t wait!”

We fell down on the pile of clothes. Right then it started. All through the house, from every room. His voice. Calling. Echoing:

“Shirley? Hey, Honey. Oh, Shirl? Bring me a coke, will you? Hey, Shirley. Come on, Honey
—
calling all cars, come to the corner bedroom, Victor Spondell is in dire need of sustenance in the way of a cold Coca-Cola.”

She crouched and began to curse him. I’d never heard anything like it. The language she used would have shamed a drunken Marine.

“Honey? Shirl? Where are you? Calling all cars. Disregard code signals. Go to the bedroom of....”

I got up and hauled her to her feet.

“You’ve got to go in there. Get a move on.”

Her face was flushed, her mouth twitching.

“Hurry up,” I said.

She yanked her shorts on.

“You wait right here,” she said. “I’ll be back!”

She went into the kitchen. I heard her speak to him over the intercom, sweet as syrup, and he came back with some of his bright wit. The refrigerator door slammed and shook the place. I heard her uncap a bottle of coke and pour it into a glass. Then she thundered through the house.

I waited. Nothing. Silence.

I waited a long time, sitting on the pile of clothes.

Finally I went through the house, and looked into the bedroom. She was seated in a chair beside his bed, reading to him.

I said, “Sorry to interrupt. I guess everything’s in order now.”

She looked up at me. Her expression was as if somebody had shot her in the face with salt. “Victor wanted me to read to him,” she said. She turned to him, smiling. “I’ll have to pay Mr. Ruxton, now, Victor.”

“All right,” he said. He said to me, “Thanks for everything you’ve done, Ruxton. Sure appreciate it. Makes things a lot easier, eh?” He laughed and coughed a little.

She came out, fuming.

I said, “You’d better pay me, and I’ll write out a receipt, just in case.”

He had already written out a check, and she had cashed it at the bank, to cover the expense of the installations. She counted out the money in bills, from her purse.

“Wouldn’t he arrange for a joint account?” I said.

She shook her head. “He never went for that. He won’t let anybody take care of him but me. He could afford nurses around the clock, and live in the finest places. He wants it this way. But he writes the checks. Sometimes, when we’ve had little arguments, he’s hinted how I may have it tough now, but I’ll get mine, someday. I honestly think there’s a mean streak in him—he gets enjoyment out of doing things the way he does.”

We were in her bedroom. She was in bad shape.

I said, “Remember, after I fix that condenser, it’s not going to be easy. The units will probably go out, and you’ll have to stick close to his room, so it’ll seem they’re on. You won’t be able to talk back to him—he wouldn’t hear anything. It’s a ticklish part, Shirley. If he catches on, before anything happens, you’ll just have to call me and we’ll go through the whole thing again.”

“I couldn’t stand it.”

“Well, then I was thinking. If you can excite him, some way—help bring on an attack. Think you could swing it?”

“Yes. I’ve seen it happen.”

I took hold of her shoulders. “That’s what you’ll have to do. We’ve got to work fast, once I do that soldering job.”

“I wish he were dead. God, how I wish it.”

“He will be.”

There wasn’t anything in the world now, but us. I held her close and tight and it all started up again. I had never wanted any woman the way I wanted Shirley Angela.

“Shirley?”
His voice blared from the unit beside her bed.
“This is Car
77,
calling Headquarters....”

Waiting for her to call the store was a nightmare. Every time the phone rang, I had to grit my teeth to keep from jumping. I thought of a thousand things that could go wrong, but the big one was that she might lose her nerve.

Finally she called on the morning of the third day. I let Pete Stallsworth answer the phone, even though I was practically running standing still.

“Jack?” he said. “It’s for you.” He grinned, covered the mouthpiece, and whispered, “Sounds like real stuff. What a voice. Va-voom!”

“Okay.” I was plenty nervous. I said, “Ruxton speaking.”

“It’s all set,” she said. “I flipped the switch. And it’s like you said, Jack. It doesn’t bother him much that it’s not working. He’s over the excitement of it, and I’ve talked him into using it only for emergencies. I told him to remember, that was why we really had it installed. He’s taken to watching TV, now.”

“I see,” I said, loud enough so Pete Stallsworth could hear. “I’ll be right out. I’m very sorry you’ve had this inconvenience.”

“He just says to have it fixed.”

“All right.”

“There’s something I’d personally like fixed, too.”

“What’s that?”

“You guess.”

She could be like a bomb, sometimes. I went out there, driving the truck like a madman. I had been practicing soldering connections and making a sloppy job of it, for two days. The right kind of perfect, sloppy job. I had it so pat I could make a unit ground out with my eyes closed, and time it to within a matter of seconds.

I parked in her drive, got out the tools, and went to the door. She opened the screen with her knee.

She whispered it. “I wore a skirt.”

“Well, keep it down,” I shot at her. “I want to be steady now.”

She was lovely. I wanted to stand there and stare at her. Her eyes were full of excitement, and her hair was brushed out thick and full. She wore a white blouse with a big curling starched collar, and a full, fluffed out print skirt, loaded with splotches of color.

His bedroom door was closed.

“Jack,” she said. “We almost fouled up.”

“How do you mean?”

“When I turned off the main switch, the TV set went off, too.”

It had completely slipped my mind. I broke out in a sweat.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I figured it out. I put the switch back on when he mentioned it, then just loosened the fuse for his section of the house. It’s marked on the box.”

“Good girl,” I said. “That was close.”

From then on, I intended to be a lot more careful. It showed me how easy it was to miss on some point, even when you were watching everything. It was an obvious point. That’s what made it so bad.

We went into his room. He lay there with his gray eyebrows snarling, and gave me the glad, “Hello, Ruxton. How’s the old son-of-a-bitch, today?”

I didn’t think he looked so hot. I hoped I was right. After he spoke, he just lay there, and watched, without much comment. The TV set was on, with the sound turned down. I thought how it would have been if I had plugged the TV into a socket in his room, instead of on a different line in the attic. She would never have figured it out. There would have been no way to turn off just the intercom alone.

“We’ll fix you up in a jiffy,” I said.

She stood behind me, watching. I knew she was nervous. He watched with those eyes, breathing sickishly. It got me nervous, too. I lit a cigarette, and uncovered the unit, and had a look.

“Blow a tube, Ruxton?” he said.

“Could be. We’ll see.”

I went around the house, and made as if I were checking all the units, after I disconnected the one in his room. I tightened the fuse in the fuse box in the utility room. Then I went back and picked up the unit in his room, and said, “Ah-ha! Here it is.”

So I soldered a .005 mfd coupling condenser to a grid terminal of a tube socket. The solder flowed like hot gravy. Not a slip-up. It was really a neat job of sloppy work.

I put the unit back together, flipped it on, and let him try it out. Then I turned it off. It would work for approximately ten seconds before heating up enough to expand the metal, make contact, and ground out. The clearance was so close that once it went out, it would stay that way for good.

I looked at him. He was staring at me.

“Questions?” I said.

He didn’t say anything, watching me.

“No, Ruxton,” he said. “No questions.”

I took another look at him, hoped it would be my last, and went into the living room. She was right there, showing me her skirt.

“I can’t hang around,” I said. “We can’t take any chances. Right now is when it’s easy to slip up, make some damned fool mistake.”

“Please, Jack—hold me.”

Well, I held her. I held her tight, and looked over her shoulder at his bedroom door.

I said, “Don’t call me unless something unforeseen comes up. Otherwise, I’ll read about it in the papers.”

“This is it, isn’t it, Jack.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure.”

“I mean,” she said. “You know, it isn’t a bad feeling. I mean, it’s exciting. There’s so much to come.”

“Let’s hope it’s all things we can handle. Don’t get cocky. Keep levelheaded.”

“I love you, Jack.”

“I love you, too.”

“Say my name.”

“Shirley.”

“It shivers me,” she said. “It’s going to be rugged, not seeing you.”

“That’s how it’s got to be.”