A groan flooded from his throat. He pulled up the pistol again. It seemed to be getting heavier. I’m weakening! The thought sent a bolt of panic through him. No, he had to keep his strength! He had to get to Bob’s apartment! He had to save Ruth.
“Come here, damn it,” he told Jane in a low voice.
Jane started slowly toward him, eyes never leaving the pistol.
“Don’t shoot,” she said. She hated herself for begging. But she was afraid; she didn’t want to get killed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Vince said huskily. “Not if you do what I say.”
Stan stood trembling by the bed watching his wife approach Vince. She shouldn’t go near him. What if he loses hold and shoots her? Vince was capable of violence. Stan knew what violence Vince was capable of. He’d seen it often. And so he reached back for the drawer again. He began working it out minutely, eyes fixed on Vince.
Jane stood before Vince, her eyes pale, reflecting no emotion.
“Take my coat off,” he told her, “and don’t try anything.”
“I’m not going to try anything,” she said, unable to keep the coldness from her voice because it had become the way she spoke to men.
Oh God! Stan thought, don’t talk to Vince like you talk to me!
His fingers fumbled at the drawer. He had to save her, he had to. Now there was a space of about three-quarters of an inch. He felt his fingers sliding in. He straightened up as Vince looked over. I mustn’t bend over so much. He tried to stare back at Vince. But Vince wasn’t interested then. Vince’s eyes were clouded with pain.
“It’s going to hurt,” Jane said in a flat, toneless voice. “Don’t point the gun at me or it’ll go off when I pull off your sleeve.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
Stan jerked spasmodically at the drawer but it still stuck.
After a moment, Vince lowered the point of the pistol. “Don’t think I can’t pull it up quick,” he threatened.
“I don’t think anything,” Jane said and put her numbed fingers on the sleeve. She wondered why she didn’t faint.
Stan watched with fear-stricken eyes as Jane started pulling at Vince’s sleeve.
Vince started to shudder without control as the white-hot spears of pain jabbed at his arm and shoulder. He cut off one whine but a second came before he could control it. He forgot the sight of Jane’s body so close to him. Everything was lost in the overwhelming pain. The room seemed to swell and contract in lurches of dark and light. What if I black out! his mind cried out in fear.
You’ll practice ’til you collapse if need be!
He jerked away to escape and the coat came off. His mouth opened in a choking gasp of agony and he fell against the wall, his frail chest heaving. He felt a trickling of warm blood down his arm.
Jane had backed away and was looking at Vince, the black raincoat in her shaking hands. “You—you’d better go in and sit down,” she heard herself say.
“Don’t tell me—what to—do,” he gasped.
He looked at Stan and saw Stan straighten up abruptly, a look of nervous fright on his face.
He grabbed at his pistol. “What are you trying to do?” he shouted furiously.
Stan shook his head quickly. “Nothing, nothing.”
“Get in the other room!” Vince ordered furiously, “Now!”
Rigid with anguished frustration Stan moved away from the table.
Vince stood against the wall as the two of them moved past and entered the living room. He blinked his eyes and shook away the sweat dripping into them. He wanted to scream out in fury because the world was conspiring against him. No matter what he did, he was just driven further from his revenge. Damn it, why hadn’t he killed Bob that day in the agency?
Before going into the living room he glanced over at the table where Stan had been. He didn’t notice the slightly open drawer. His teeth gritted and he edged into the living room.
He started for the couch. “Come over here and fix my arm,” he said, his voice hoarse and shaking. “Hurry up or I’ll…”
He didn’t finish. A cloud of blackness seemed to rush up from the floor like a great dark bird. He stumbled back with a gasp of fright and almost lost consciousness.
Then his calves bumped into the couch edge and he fell onto it. The flaring pain in his left arm drove knives of consciousness into his brain. He saw them both looking at him.
“Don’t try anything!” he cried shrilly. “I swear to—!”
No!
But he couldn’t stop it. He sat there with the tears rushing down his cheeks and his thin chest shaking with sobs. Through the quivering prisms of his tears he saw them standing there, watching him.
I’d never reach him in time, Stan was thinking. He’d shoot me before I could reach him. There’s no chance.
Jane stood staring at Vince. Only slowly was the shock departing, the sudden driving bolt of it that struck when Vince had pointed the gun at her. But now the gun was not pointing at her. And Vince’s face was the twisted, frightened face of a boy. She felt sick.
What a terrible product Vince’s father had put forth into the world. What a hideous testament to his distorted ambition: to produce the mirror of himself.
She found herself remembering Saul Raden as he had been the night of Vince’s debut in Carnegie Hall.
She remembered the almost hysterical ebullience of the man—the father reflecting the glory of his son. No more than that—the father taking the credit for the glory of his son. A modern Svengali—that’s what Saul Raden had been that night—gaunt and fever-charged, forgetting the past in a distended present. Repressing the knowledge that his own hands were useless twists of bone and meat that could no longer produce the surging glory of a Beethoven sonata or the polished effulgence of a Chopin waltz. Forgetting the auto accident that had caught him in the middle of his rising concert career, killed his bride and snapped the bones of his future like toothpicks, driving a wedge of madness into his brain.
She remembered that as she watched the son of Saul Raden sobbing on her couch, broken and mad. And she remembered the night she had tried to get Vince in bed with her.
Once again she was in the bedroom of Saul Raden’s penthouse apartment, holding Vince’s lean, hungry body against hers, both of them half-clothed, her naked breasts pressing into him, the dark room swept with hot winds of forgetfulness.
Then the light had flared, blinding them. Saul Raden stood in the doorway, a supercilious twist on his lips, not the shadow of an emotion on his face. Vince started up with a gasp, his face mottled with shame. And Saul’s voice fell over them like a spray of splintered ice.
“Dear boy, do go to the bathroom and wash off your face. You look positively bizarre.”
She remembered the fury in her, the snapping of control. She remembered shattering the whiskey bottle over the edge of the table and lunging at Vince—knowing, even in her madness, that the only way to hurt Saul was to hurt Vince’s hands.
And the whiteness, the sudden rigid pallor of Saul’s face; she remembered that. Remembered his lean, white-scarred hands clamping on her wrists, the twisted wound of his mouth shouting at her, “If you dare touch his hands, I swear to God I’ll kill you!”
And now that son of Saul Raden was looking up at her, brushing aside tears and swallowing.
And saying in a low, throaty voice, “Bandage my arm.”
She blinked and looked down at the gauze, tape and iodine still in her hands.
Without thinking she walked to the couch and sat down beside Vince. “Put it down,” she said, looking at the gun that shook in his hand. “I’m not going to take it away from you.”
Vince rested the pistol in his lap. “You’d better not try,” he warned. “I’ll kill you if you do.”
Words, words, she thought, hardly hearing what he said. She was winding gauze around his upper arm, over the wound. She didn’t tear open his shirt.
“Do you want iodine on it?” she asked, suddenly conscious
of the fact that Stan was standing near the bedroom door, watching.
Vince’s throat moved. Why did she have to ask him? He hated to concentrate on extraneous things. He had to concentrate on one thing—making it crowd out all unimportant things. Kill Bob, kill Bob, kill…
“Yes,” he said quickly.
“It’ll hurt,” she said. “A lot…”
“Then don’t put it on!” he snapped in a nerve-ragged voice. “What’s the matter with you?”
Jane’s lips pressed together, her mind more conscious of the situation again. He’s like a sullen little boy, she thought—only the little boy was wounded and he had a big gun in his hand. She wondered idly if the gun was really loaded.
Stan was standing near the bedroom door. Could he run in, lock the door and get the gun before Vince could shoot open the lock? His throat tightened. It seemed reasonable enough. But he didn’t move. He kept watching the two of them on the couch. He heard Jane say “You’ll have to go to a doctor.”
Vince started to answer, then gritted his teeth in pain and anger. She was just trying to make things more complicated. She knew he couldn’t go to a doctor. And he couldn’t leave there because they’d call the police and the police would take him back and they’d kill him for stabbing Harry with the bottle.
Why did everyone conspire against him? Why did everything go wrong? He had to get to Bob McCall. He had to free Ruth. It was his duty.
Your duty is to the piano, Vincent, only to the piano.
Saul’s words again filtering through the years like a poisonous gas. Liar! He had no duty to the piano. He looked down at his arm, feeling the throbbing hot pain in it. Then, in a moment of terrible shock, he wondered if he would ever play again.
He felt his stomach tighten. To never play again.
The world fell on him. Visions ran through his mind—he was on stage in Carnegie Hall, one empty tuxedo sleeve in his pocket, the other hand moving futilely over the keys, trying to play both parts at once. And people in the audience, silently shaking their heads. A pity, such a pity—he might have been one of the greats.
Saul, help me!
Jane looked at him in surprise when he sobbed. There was something in her eyes he didn’t want to see—something that looked too much like pity.
“Don’t look at me,” he gasped, “I swear to God I’ll kill you if you do.”
As he raised the gun to point it at her he noticed Stan moving near the bedroom door. His eyes fled over and he saw Stan’s face blanch.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Stan said.
“You better not try anything, Stan,” Vince gasped. “I swear to God I’d just as soon…”
His throat clogged and he swallowed. He had to get rid of Stan, he didn’t like Stan to stand there like that.
“Get in the kitchen,” he ordered. “Make me some coffee. I want some coffee.”
“All right, all right,” Stan said, “I’ll make some for you.”
Jane heard the bare feet moving across the rug, heard Stan flicking on the kitchen light, and she silently cursed him for his cowardice. She went on bandaging.
Stan stood in the middle of the bleak kitchen looking around for a weapon. He felt his heart thudding fitfully as his eyes moved over the walls, into the partially opened cabinets, over the stove and refrigerator.
He moved to the drawer in a step. Slowly, carefully, he drew it out without making a sound. He looked down at the long, shining knives.
“What are you doing!” Vince called.
Stan twitched and hurriedly pushed in the drawer.
“Making coffee!” he answered. And in his mind the accusation came, You’re afraid, you’re a coward.
In the living room, Vince was looking at the black nightgown Jane wore. As she moved her hands around his arm, tightening and pulling snug, he saw the movement of her uncupped breasts and he felt that strange, dismaying heat in his body again. It was wrong; he knew it was wrong.
The heat had come often in his young life. Saul had mocked it. Endlessly, Vince had fought that shapeless fire in his body, trying to force down the flames and, in so doing, only fanned them higher. Until they scorched.
He lowered his eyes when he saw that she noticed him staring at her breasts.
“I—I want a cigarette,” he said nervously.
“Over there,” Jane said, gesturing at the table beside the chair across the room.
“Get me some,” Vince said.
She got up and moved over the rug. He let his eyes run up and down her body. As she stood before the table, he could see her body outlined against the lamplight. His mouth pressed together angrily.
“Bitch,” he muttered, thinking she wouldn’t hear.
Her mouth tightened and her throat moved as she picked up the box of cigarettes. She knew Vince was looking at her body. She wondered, momentarily, if she could use her body as a weapon.
Forcing away the tight look, she turned and brought back the cigarettes. As she lit one for him her eyes moved over his tight, boylike face.
“How did you get out?” she asked.
“That’s my business,” he said, “not yours.”
But, after a moment, a thin, confident smile raised his lips. The throbbing wasn’t so bad, the bleeding had stopped. Why not tell her, scare her?
“I’m going to kill somebody,” he said as casually as he could. He liked the sound of the words.
Her eyes were on him.
“I’m going to shoot somebody right in the head,” he told her.
He didn’t understand the look in her eyes. Then she bent over and it seemed that, accidentally, as she did, the nightgown fell away from her breasts. He stared with sick eyes, the hot churning starting in his stomach.
Her eyes looked up at him now, suddenly inviting. It worked exactly opposite. He didn’t know why, she didn’t know why. But, suddenly, rage exploded in his mind and he flailed out with his pistol.
His aim was poor and the barrel end raked across her right temple, tearing open the skin. Jane fell back in fright, one hand flung up to protect herself.
“Bitch!” Vince yelled at her.
Stan came in hurriedly, his face slack with fear.
“Get in and make me some coffee, I said!” Vince screamed. Stan backed away toward the kitchen, his eyes on Jane.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He waited. “Jane?” he said.
“Make coffee, make coffee,” she said, her voice low and hating.
She sat there looking at Vince, her lips tight, feeling the thin dribble of blood on her temple. I hope the police come and shoot him down like a dog. I hope they blow him to pieces.
She saw him looking at her breasts again, and she turned away with a shudder.
Stan stood trembling before the stove, watching the coffee perk.
He started as Vince came far enough into the kitchen so he could watch both him and Jane.
“Just don’t try anything,” Vince said, bluffing a menace he didn’t feel. “Make me a sandwich too. I’m hungry.”
“A sandwich,” Stan said weakly as Vince walked out of the kitchen. He opened up the drawer again and looked in at the knives. I have to, he thought, I have to…
Vince walked around the living room, ignoring Jane. Then he stopped and looked around the room impatiently. Why was he staying here? He had to get to Bob’s apartment. He had his job, his obligation to Ruth.
But how? How did he get to Bob’s apartment without Stan and Jane warning the police?
I’ll rip out the phone, he thought. He was suddenly pleased at the invention of his mind.
But the smile faded. They could go out after he left, call from a neighbor’s phone or from a phone booth in some store. And he couldn’t afford to waste two bullets. He might not even have them.
He fumbled with the gun, trying to open it so he could see how many bullets there were. But he knew nothing of guns and he couldn’t get it open. A hiss of anger passed his lips.
&nb
sp; Then he found his eyes suddenly on the telephone beside the chair he was in. He looked at the black receiver and at the dial.
And the smile returned.
3:15 AM
He grunted a little and felt Ruth’s legs twitch against him. Then he cleared his throat and tried to go back to sleep but the jangling wouldn’t let him.
He felt her hand on his shoulder.
“Honey?” she whispered.
He woke up. “Uh?”
“Telephone.”
“Oh, my God,” he muttered disgustedly.
He pulled back the covers and let his legs down to the floor. As he stood, he winced at the cold of the floorboards against his feet.
“Who could it be?” he heard her murmur from the dark warmth of the bed.
“God knows,” he said, yawning, and walked around the edge of the bed. In the living room the phone kept ringing.
“All right, all right,” he mumbled. He picked up the receiver with sleep-numbed fingers.
“Yeah.”
“Bob.”
Just his name; but the way it was spoken shook away the mists around his brain.
“Yes,” he answered.
“This is Stan, Bob I—could you cover over?”
“What?” Bob’s voice rose in unpleasant surprise.
“Could you—Bob, could you come over?” Stan’s voice was tightly urgent.
Bob yawned. “What time is it?” he asked.
“About three-fifteen.”
“My God, what are you doing, having a party?” Bob asked.
There was another pause.
“No, no—the—party is over.”
And the way Stan said that. It made Bob shudder; and, suddenly awake, he thought, My God, he’s killed Jane!
His throat moved.
“You want me to come over?” he asked, not knowing what to say.
“Y-yes, Bob. Can you?”
“I guess so.” He took a deep breath. “All right, Stan, I’ll be right over,” he said. “Are you…?”
The receiver dropped abruptly on the other end of the line and Bob stood there a moment in the darkness holding the receiver to his ear. Then, slowly, he put down the receiver and went back into the bedroom.