Fuck!
I’ve got the fucking drop-off tonight! Gotta take that fucking maniac his money.
The thought of it made Vince feel squirmy inside.
He’s terrified of Glitt, Neal realized. Why the hell did you hire Glitt if you’re scared to death of him?
Because he’s the best man for the job? If you want a sadistic rapist to take care of your wife for you . . .
Stop it! Neal warned himself. You’re missing stuff. Pay attention.
. . . get there by two . . . Leave around one-thirty? Drink in hand, Vince stepped outside. That oughta do it, can’t take more than half an hour. Why’d he pick a place so far away?
Vince started to close the door, sliding it slowly.
I’d better get there early. Good and early. Don’t want to run into that fucking beast. Just drop it off and get my ass out of there.
So what time?
Maybe one at the latest.
The door bumped shut.
Try to fuck these babes and get rid of them by midnight. Midnight at the latest.
Should be easy.
Neal snarled into his mind, ‘You’ll fuck these babes when Hell freezes over, dirtbag.’
Vince turned away from the door. Marta had already set her drink on the round, glass-topped table. Sue stood at the other side of it.
‘Is this all right?’ Sue asked.
‘Wonderful,’ Vince said.
They all sat down on patio chairs around the table.
‘Sure is nice out here,’ Sue said, turning her head and gazing at the pool. ‘Sure wish I had me a place like this.’
‘You’re welcome to come over any time,’ Vince said. ‘Both of you.’
‘Thanks,’ Sue said. ‘That’s awful nice. Know what? Ya fooled me. I figured you’d be sort of a creep.’
They know all about me!
‘Yer always such a mean stinker in yer movies.’
False alarm.
She smiled at him. ‘I never been to a movie star’s house, before.’
My lovely, sweet darling!
‘Oh, I’m not what one would call a star.’
‘Sure y’are. I seen bunches of yer movies.’
‘We’re both fans of your work,’ Marta added.
‘Why, thank you.’
‘Ya know my favorite?’ Sue asked. ‘It’s the one where you hire this guy to knock off yer business partner.’
Nodding as if he appreciated her praise, he tried to figure out which film she meant. In several, he’d paid men to murder people who were causing him trouble.
‘I can’t recall the name of it,’ Sue said, frowning.
‘Neither can I,’ Vince admitted. ‘I’ve been in so many. Do you remember the cast?’
‘There was you.’
He chuckled.
‘I don’t know. Was it Chuck Norris?’
‘I haven’t appeared with Chuck Norris.’
‘Well, must’ve been somebody else. Anyhow, how it ends, yer in this parking lot, all set to hand over a million bucks to the killer . . .’
Vince suddenly stopped trying to figure out which film she was trying to describe.
He saw himself swinging his car into a parking lot at night.
Tonight? Neal wondered. What is this? A memory? Or is he thinking about tonight?
The scene was continuing in Vince’s mind. He was climbing out of his car in a brightly lighted parking lot. The lot of a Video City store; Neal could see the big, neon sign in the background.
Vince carried a wrinkled old grocery sack by his side. Its top was crinkled down, its bottom swollen.
My God, that’s it! The money’s in the bag! That’s the payoff!
You did it, Sue! You did it!
‘ . . . only instead of him showing up for the payoff, the killer? . . . it’s the guy he was s’pose to’ve murdered. Who was that? Could’ve sworn it was Chuck Norris.’
‘Van Damme?’ Marta suggested.
‘Nah.’
‘That Steven Seagal?’
Vince, his mind-film rolling, sees himself stuff the grocery sack inside a garbage container beside Video City’s front entrance. As he releases the sack, a voice from behind says, ‘The joke’s on you.’ He whirls around. Elise is striding toward him, very alive, dressed in her blue satin pajamas. The pajamas flow against her body, purple in the lights of the parking lot. She carries a bloody meat cleaver in one hand. In her other hand, swinging by its hair, is the head of Leslie Glitt.
‘That movie doesn’t sound at all familiar to me,’ Marta said, pulling Vince’s mind out of the awful fantasy.
He picked up his glass and took a drink. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t ring a bell with me, either.’
‘I coulda swore it was you,’ Sue told him.
‘I don’t believe it was.’
Sue shook her head, and took a drink. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘don’t I just feel like a prize shit?’
Vince chuckled. ‘No call for that.’
‘Katt’s always sticking her foot in her mouth,’ Marta told him. ‘I think she must enjoy the flavor.’
‘Yer’s, they’re so big they don’t fit in nobody’s mouth.’
‘Let’s not fight, girls,’ Vince said, enjoying himself.
‘Show him yer big feet,’ Sue taunted.
‘Settle down, Katt.’
‘They’re so big, she can’t fall down. Just pops right on up again. She can’t drown, either. It’s as good as wearin flippers. She’s safe anywhere.’
‘Ha ha,’ Marta said. ‘You’re hilarious.’
‘Yer so safe, I’d hide my jewelry in ya – if I had some.’
Vince laughed.
‘If you ever did that,’ Marta told her, ‘I wouldn’t give you the combination.’
‘What combination?’ Sue asked.
‘To open me up and take your jewelry out.’
‘I ain’t got no jewelry.’
Laughing, Vince shook his head.
Come on, come on, Neal thought. Your safe. Think about your safe and combination. It’s the least you can do, these two jumping through hoops for you this way.
‘If I had some jewelry,’ Sue said, ‘last thing I’d do with it is to stick it in you. Less maybe I shove it where the sun don’t shine.’
‘Girls, girls.’
Marta sighed and shook her head. ‘I have to apologize for my cousin. She’s not usually this way. I imagine it’s the vodka. She’s not actually old enough to drink, you know.’
‘I am too old enough. I was old enough when I hit nine.’
Vince, surprised and amused, raised his eyebrows. ‘You started drinking at the age of nine?’
‘Yup. That’s when I figured out how to lay my hands on Daddy’s booze. He kept it locked up, ’cause of Mom bein a lush. There was this lock on the cabinet. The combination kind? Well, Daddy had him a real bad memory, so he wrote the combination numbers on a piece of paper that he kept in his billfold. So one night when he was sleepin, I snuck a peek at it and copied it all down. I got away without him catchin me, went straight to the booze cabinet and squatted down and started workin on the lock. It was a left this way, a right that way, and then a left. Like that. Took me eight or nine tries. All that left and right stuff, and do ya pass the number once or stop at it right off the bat – hard to keep it all straight. But then I finally got the thing to unlock for me. I opened it up and there was ten different sorts of booze all lined up in rows. I had me sips from every bottle. Time I got done, ya never seen a girl so drunk. It’s a miracle I made it back to bed.’ She sighed. ‘Anyhow, I didn’t touch another drop for about five years after that.’
While Sue was telling her story, Vince had let her words become moving images in his mind. He’d watched her sneak through a house at night, find the numbers in her father’s wallet, then squat in front of a cabinet and struggle with the combination lock.
In Vince’s version, however, she did not appear to be nine years old. She looked as she looked now.
&nb
sp; Except that her bikini was gone.
In his mental film, Vince had viewed Sue from the front, as if his eyes were in the door of the liquor cabinet, level with her breasts as she tried to work the combination lock. Her skin had looked like bronze in a shimmering, ruddy light. Her knees had been wide apart, almost touching the cabinet door.
Squatting that way, she’d soon opened the door. And Vince had been inside the cabinet, watching her reach in and take out bottles, remove their caps, take swigs.
While listening to the story and living it inside his mind, Vince had grown hard again.
But he never gave a thought to his own safe or to the numbers of its combination lock.
He hasn’t got a safe, Neal thought.
So where’s the money hidden?
Somewhere in the house, ready to go. Already in a grocery sack, maybe.
Let’s find out.
Forty-Eight
Neal wished they’d parked in the shade. He found himself in the rear of the Jeep, sunbaked and streaming sweat, his clothes sodden. Feeling as if the sun had drained away half his strength, he reached up and grabbed the roll bar and pulled himself to his feet.
He stood there, hanging on to it.
Marta’s purse and clothes were piled on the driver’s seat, Sue’s on the passenger seat.
Never should’ve let them do this.
The slimy, scheming bastard and his fucking hard-ons . . .
Neal stepped up onto the side of the Jeep. From there, he jumped to the pavement. Leaning over the top of the driver’s door, he reached for the steering wheel.
‘Put a stop to this shit right now,’ he muttered, and shoved the wheel’s hub.
He expected a blast from the horn.
He got silence.
He pressed the wheel’s center again, felt its give, but heard no horn.
‘Great,’ he muttered. ‘Terrific’
Why the hell didn’t Marta tell me her horn’s on the fritz?
Now what? he wondered.
How about going for the money, stupid? That’s what you were supposed to do in the first place, not wimp out and go for the damn horn. You came here for the bastard’s money. The gals’ve been parading around as good as naked in front of the sick fuck to where they’ve got him half nuts – they’ve tricked everything out of him, we’ve got all his secrets – now all we need is the money and it’ll be mission accomplished. We’ll have the cash and he’ll have shit.
He’ll have his big memories of a cocktail hour and a hard cock with his dear friends Tracy and Katt.
And he’ll have a big empty bag full of nothing when it comes to paying Glitt.
Neal stretched out his arm and snatched Marta’s ignition key out of the steering wheel.
Can’t have someone driving off . . .
Then he opened the car door, leaned in, and stuffed their purses underneath the front seats.
He shut the door gently, silently, dropped Marta’s key case into a pocket of his shorts, and ran back along the roadside. He raced past the driveway with its closed, iron gate.
The smaller gate was shut, but not locked.
He opened it, stepped through, and walked toward the house.
If I were a bag full of money, where would I be?
Not outside, that’s for sure.
Hidden in the bedroom? Under the bed, maybe?
Apparently, the slug hasn’t got a safe.
First things first, Neal told himself. Get inside the house.
He headed up the walkway toward the front door.
Vince had let the gals in that way. He’d shut it after them, but was it locked?
Neal tried it.
It was locked.
Which left the sliding doors.
Neal remembered a total of three sliding glass doors along the rear of the house: in the living room, the den, and the master bedroom. Vince had used two of them while Neal’d been inside him. And he’d locked neither of them.
Why should he? He’s sitting back there where he can keep an eye on them.
The bedroom door, the one Elise had opened for Neal on Sunday night, might or might not be locked.
Neal pictured the position of the glass-topped table.
Only yards from the den door.
And Vince was seated so that he faced the bedroom area.
Those two doors were out.
Which left the living room door, not very far from where Vince sat, but at least behind him.
That’s if nobody’s changed position yet.
Neal jogged across the front lawn, then stopped and glanced around the corner. Nobody. He rounded the corner and hurried on, walking swiftly through the shadows of the fruit trees. As he approached the back of the house, he detected the quiet murmur of voices.
He peeked around the corner.
They all sat around the table, just as when Neal had left them. Vince, as expected, was facing away. His head and bare, tanned shoulders showed above the back of his chair. Marta sat with her back to the pool. Neal had a good view of her left side and much of her front. Sue sat across the table from Vince, but somewhat closer to the house so that Neal had a clear line of sight.
She might be looking right at me.
He slowly raised his hand and waved.
Sue nodded and said something Neal couldn’t make out. Vince laughed. Marta turned her head slightly in Neal’s direction. With her forefinger, she pushed at the bridge of her sunglasses. Neal wiggled his forefinger at her. She faced Vince and reached out and picked up her drink.
Neal was fairly sure that Marta had spotted him. He wasn’t so sure about Sue.
If she hasn’t yet, she will.
He pulled the pistol out of his pocket. Holding it ready by his side, he stepped around the corner of the house and began sneaking over the concrete toward the sliding door to the living room.
Keep him interested, ladies. Don’t let him look.
Mouth parched, heart thumping fast, Neal raised his left hand and pressed his forefinger to his lips. Marta and Sue gave no hint that they saw him. They both acted as if they were enjoying cocktails with a fascinating movie star.
Neal kept moving, though he trembled badly. Soon, he was close enough to understand the words being spoken.
‘No,’ Marta said. ‘Not me. I broke up with my fellow almost a year ago.’
‘And why was that?’ Vince asked.
Neal still had such a long way to go – twelve, maybe fifteen feet.
The handle of the sliding glass door, still so far away, appeared to be only six feet behind Vince’s back.
I’ll never make it. He’ll look around and . . .
‘Ah, he thought he owned me. I can’t stand possessive men. He was so jealous, he went nuts any time I so much as glanced at another guy. He even beat me up one time.’
Not me, Neal thought. Who is she talking about? Somebody beat her up? Who the hell did that? I’ll kill the son of a bitch.
Maybe she’s making it up.
She’d better be.
‘That’s awful!’ Vince blurted. Reaching out, he put a hand on Marta’s forearm.
Get your mitt off her, you fucking shit.
‘Heinous. How could anyone dare to harm such a lovely young lady?’
‘Comes easy for some of them,’ Marta said.
‘Despicable.’
‘Well, he didn’t get a chance to hit me again, I’ll tell you that much. It was “so long, pal, been good to know you.”’
‘Only not that good, huh?’ Sue put in.
‘He was a low-down dirty bastard.’
She can’t be talking about me, Neal thought.
And he finally arrived at the handle of the door.
‘Keep talking, Marta. He’ll hear the slightest sound.’ God, I can’t believe I’m standing right behind him.
Vince turned his head from Marta to Sue. ‘And how about you, Kitty Katt? Do you have a boyfriend?’
‘Not just now,’ Sue said. She smiled – a smile that seemed to be a
imed over Vince’s shoulder and straight at Neal. ‘I had me one, only he was always at me, if ya know what I mean. It ain’t that I don’t like that sorta thing as much as anyone, only there’s a time and place for it. He just wouldn’t ever leave me alone. I never seen such a lech! Last time we went out, get this, he tried to boink me on a rollycoaster.’
‘Tried to what you?’ Vince asked.
‘Boink me, do me, screw me. Ya know?’
‘Ah. I see.’
‘Almost got us both killed.’
Vince chuckled. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone doing it on a rollercoaster. Sounds rather intriguing.’
‘Don’t ever try it if ya value yer life.’
Neal reached out carefully and gripped the door handle. But he didn’t dare pull it. Neal could well imagine the sucking squeak the door would make as it let go of the jamb.
He grimaced at Sue, then glanced toward Marta, who was taking a drink.
‘Looks as we’re all about ready for a refill,’ Vince said. ‘Can’t fly on one wing.’
Neal’s stomach dropped.
‘Not me,’ Sue said quickly. ‘Thanks anyhow. Maybe later. Time for me to hit the water.’ She shoved back her chair, sprang to her feet, whirled around and pranced toward the pool. Vince’s head turned to watch.
Neal watched, too.
She was tawny and shining, bare except for the skinny black bands of her suit. Neal supposed that Vince’s eyes must be locked on the flexing mounds of her buttocks. His own certainly were.
This is distracting the bastard all right, but he’s still going to hear the door . . .
Sue leaped off the edge of the pool. In midair, she jerked up her legs and hugged her knees. She dropped rump-first.
Cannonball!
She struck the water with a heavy, solid splash – THUGG-DUMP!
At the same moment, Marta yelled, ‘THAT-AWAY-T’-GO-KATTSY-BABE!!!’
At the same moment, Neal jerked the door open.
It let out a loud, squeaking suck, but Vince didn’t turn his head.
Nor did he turn his head to investigate the low rumble of its sliding. He probably couldn’t hear it through the splatter sounds of Sue’s falling splashwater pelting the surface of the pool and Marta’s voice saying to him, ‘I’m going in. Are you ready? You’re coming in, too, aren’t you?’
Neal stepped through the gap and into the living room.