Kitten with a whip (10 page)

He watched Tody awaken. First, she scratched her hip in her sleep. Then a glint appeared between her lashes, one glimpse blank and uncomprehending before she dozed off again. Then her eyelids crept open warily and her gaze hunted slowly about the room. She saw David and smiled.

"Come here," she said huskily.

He shook his head.

"That's a heck of a thing—after last night."

"I don't want to talk about last night."

"I do." She raised up on her elbows, pouting. "Hey, you were getting big kicks, as I remember. I thought you never woulof leave me alone."

Thank God, he didn't remember that. Or maybe she was making it up.

"Give me a cigarette," Jody demanded. He did and ht it for her. She knelt in the middle of the bed, posing like a starlet for him, letting the smoke stream from her nostrils while her eyes beckoned seductively. "You're certainly a strong guy, David sweetheart. I really had no idea."

"I think just the opposite. All I feel is sorry."

"Now why?" she said coaxingly.

"You wouldn't understand."

She flared up. "What makes you think I'm so dumb all the time!"

"Skip it. It's a personal matter."

Her face changed to a coquettish smirk. "Well, how much more personal can we get, the games we been playing? Oh, David loosen up and give with the fun, huh? All day yesterday I could see you thinking how you'd like to pull down my panties so last night J do you the biggest favor I know how and now here this morning you're all mopey and blah. And, wait a minutel Today's my birthdayl No wonder I feel so goodi"

'^Congratulations." He turned toward the door. "I'm going to fix some breakfast/'

"No, let me do that. I'm a good cook." She bounced out of the bed and stretched in front of the full-length mirror, rising up on tiptoe, a vibrant tanned young animal. "Eighteen," she mused, admiring her bare body. She caught sight of David in the mirror and asked in a piping baby voice, "Is daddy's wittle birthday girl too old for a spanking?" She giggled.

He said wearily, "Jesus Christ, Jody. Grow up."

"I am. Look at me. I wonder what time you started loving me last night. If it was after midnight, you're in the clear. Before midnight, that'd be statutory rape." She glanced around at him. "You don't laugh at anything much, do you?"

"We don't see things the same way." For the first time, it occurred to him that they both might be right— or both wrong. He cast the concept aside hurriedly. If he didn't hold on tight to his own point of view, he'd get off-balance sure. He squinted quizzically at the preening girl. "Jo^y* I know I'm not the first man you've slept with, not by a long shot probably, but don't you feel anything at all about last night? Like you wasted part of yourself or something?"

"No, why should I? Just don't get the idea I'm cheap, okay? I don't go round loving up just anybody." Regarding herself in the mirror, she patted her shallow stomach speculatively. "Wonder if I'm pregnant. There's a cute idea. What all would you do for me then, David?"

His mouth went dry at the prospect and he couldn't speak. Jody went on, "I'm probably not. I'm not the type. Still, wouldn't it be a laugh, though? Our wittle baby . . ." She laughed at his expression in the mirror. He could almost feel her twisting the knife. "What do you want, David, a boy? We could name him—"

He turned abruptly and escaped from her. He went out on the front lawn to pick up the Sunday paper and even the hot immobile air tasted good after what he'd gone through inside the house. So limitless was the sky that he began to wonder how much longer he could stand being cooped up with Jody. He had an impulse to run and keep on running but he fought it down.

Across the street, the O'Haras were backing their car into the street, leaving on their way to church. Their two youngsters, Katie's playmates, waved at him fren-ziedly from the rear seat. He waved back with the Sunday paper and watched the car out of sight down the street. He was not a churchgoer and this morning, for the first time that he could remember, he regretted it. At this moment, he longed desperately for a strength greater than he possessed all by himself. But it was too late now. Due to circumstances beyond our control, ladies and gentlemen . . .

He trudged back into the house. Jody was in the kitchen, inspecting the contents of the refrigerator. All she wore was the lacy blue brassiere and panties he'd bought her, and a dishtowel tied around her waist as an apron. He was grateful for whatever whim had caused her not to put on Virginia's negligee again. She said, "Go 'way. Let me surprise you."

David sat down in the living room to scan the newspaper. The story of her escape and the search was on page two, differing little from what he had heard on television yesterday evening. The wounded matron, though still in serious condition, was no longer on the critical list. Jody had been booked on three previous offenses, the first—soliciting—when she was fourteen. The other two were assault charges. This had been her second stay at Juvenile Hall. The sheriff's department was admittedly puzzled as to how a girl clad only in a nightgown had eluded them so far but claimed to have several leads as to her whereabouts. Citizens were warned not to attempt to take the fugitive into custody but to call the nearest law enforcement agency. Jody Drew was characterized as "extremely dangerous".

From the kitchen she called, "Feeding time!" and' David put the paper aside to join her at the breakfast table. Her boast of being a good cook was as exaggerated as most of her statements. The meal was barely fit to eat. The bacon lay greasy and limp, the eggs were overdone and even the coffee had a biting burnt taste. He ate the food without comment even though he sensed she was waiting for a compliment.

"Youre sure a lot of fun," she complained finally. "What's wrong with you, anyway?"

He eyed her steadily over his cofiFee cup. "Wondering what time today you're planning to leave/'

"How do you know I'm not planning to stay over?"

"Make sense, kid. My wife gets in early tomorrow morning. You've got me cornered but you'll never be able to pull that stuflF on Virginia. It won't work on a woman. Your whole blackmail thing is based on the fact that I'm of the opposite sex. Understand?"

Jody was silent for a while, brooding. "I bet your wire's going to be anxious to keep you out of trouble, too," she said at last. "Maybe I'd be smart to stick here where it's comfortable and take my chances with what-chamacallit—Virginia."

"I thought you were smarter than that."

She caught his eye to see if he were kidding. "Well, if I do leave today it's only because I'm bored sick." She grinned suddenly. "Okay, suppose I leave it up to my big strong lover. How are you going to get me away safe?*

"I'd have to think about it." He got up from the breakfast table. "Just stack the dishes—111 put them in the machine later." He went out the back door, hoping his exultation didn't show. Jody was on the verge of wanting to go. There wasn't enough excitement left for her in tlie Patton house. He could have made an offer to her then and there but he decided that the wisest course would be to let her imdergo a little loneliness. Solitary confinement, he thought. Maybe I can bring her to the point where she thinks the idea of leaving comes from her.

He looked at his watch. Give her an hour, he thought; one hour of mooning around an empty house. He knew he was banking too much on wishful thinking, yet he couldn't help but hope. This was the first positive action he'd taken since Jody had usurped his home and his life. His whole approach yesterday had been misguided; he could see that now. His attitude, fortified by his drinking, had been to withdraw toward unconsciousness, as if she'd vanish in his sleep. As if she existed only because he was awake and believing in her.

Since it was Sunday, David tackled the routine task of

irrigating his fruit trees. He set the hose and then leaned against the back fence to have a cigarette. He watched the water trickle along his methodically cut trenches, darkening the thirsty soil, the silvery head of the flow changing from shape to shape as it pushed along. Every five minutes, sometimes oftener, he stole a glance at his watch. When it was one hour, to the very second, he strolled back toward the house, trying hard not to hurry.

He found Jody in the living room, sprawled on the couch, examining her fingernails. When one didn't suit her, she cleaned it with her teeth. The Sunday comics were spread all over the floor where she'd been reading them. "What you been doing?"

"Nothing," ne said, and sank into the easy chair.

"Nothing on television at this hour," she commented. "Except sermons." He gnmted, leaving the conversation up to her. She held up a forefinger for him to see. "I cut my finger last ni^t, picking up the pieces. That pretty bottle you broker

He nodded but didn't speak. A moment later, he could no longer stand his own silence. "Jody, were you kidding me yesterday about wanting to go to Kansas?"

"Kansas?^ she said blankly, and his hopes fell. "Oh, that. Who in their right mind would want to go to Kansas?"

"But I thought you had relatives there.*

"I don't have any relatives," she told him indifferently and went back to work on her nails. Welly he decided, ifs not panning out. You spoke up too soon.

Then Jody cocked her head at him thoughtfully. "No, I'd Hke to be somewhere where it's big, you know? I wouldn't mind going to New York, or even Chicago. How much money you got, David?"

His heart began to beat faster. "About fifty bucks in cash. It's all yours."

"Fifty bucks isn't much." Jody wrinkled her forehead in disappointment. "Course, it's not nothing either. Maybe if somewhere along the way, I got a good lift. . ."

She appeared to be thinking. David waited tensely, expecting her any second to biurst out laughing at the way she was teasing him.

"I guess," she said slowly, mostly to herself.

"Get dressed," he said, afraid she would change her mind. "I'll take you in town to the bus station."

Tody got up and stretched slowly. She said casually,, "Okay."

Chapter Nine

It was a strange sensation, sneaking away from your own house, skulking through your own neighborhood. As on yesterday morning, Jody was again crouched on the floor of the station wagon. This time, however, she was fully clothed in the blue dress David had bought her. There ve been plenty of changes in twenty-four hours, he thought. Yesterday morning I was the gallant ass out to help a girl in distress. Today Vm doing everything in my power to get rid of her. It put him in mind of those medieval demons that came in the night and stole a man's strength in his sleep. As a college boy, the idea had intrigued him. The incubus—or was it the succubus? He never could keep it straight, which preyed on men and which preyed on women. Grotesque notion, the stealing of semen for the Devil who has none of his own.

For that matter, he wondered, how he^d had time in college for such outlandish reading? He'd been loaded down with engineering courses and going steady with Virginia. He probed deeper, shuttling backward and forward in time. A horn romantic, he finally decided. And he'd never outgrown it. Maybe he'd never completely grown up. Maybe all his life he'd been headed straight for this very comerful of trouble. Maybe he'd never really been challenged before yesterday.

And how had he proved himself? He didn't care to think about that.

Either Jody had astonishing intuition, or she interpreted his sigh of rehef as he turned out of his immediate neighborhood in Knoll Valley onto the freeway. She popped up from her hiding place and climbed over into the front seat beside him.

"Now don't worry," she assured him. "They won't be looking for a blonde."

'It's your neck," he said. "You know, at times I think you're so busy needling me that you forget you're the one they want. Put your skirt down."

"It's cooler this way."

"Okay, look as cheap as you want, then."

"Who's needling vsrho now?" But she pulled her skirt down to her knees. She folded her hands primly in her lap and chuckled. "No, killer, I'm not going to let you make me mad."

He glanced at her demure profile and found it hard to believe that this was the same creature who had lolled wantonly on his bed this morning. And he remembered yesterday morning, when he has first seen her dressed in the new clothes. He had been radier proud of her then. He had even thought proudly of her as his creation.

Well, maybe so.

"Ever heard of Frankenstein?" he asked her.

"In the movies, the monster? Sure. Why?"

"Just curious."

As they sped along, the freeway sliced ruthlessly through old neighborhoods and spanned anemic business districts, once the brave booming edge of the city that had now swallowed them. Jody breathed deep witn excitement. Her face daited this way and that, as if she must see everything. She seemed to feed on excitement; it brought her to full bloom. David took a quick look at her smooth forearms again. He didn't pretend to know much about narcotics addiction but he wondered what purpose it would serve Jody. She thrived on any passing moment that supplied speed and tension; it didn't seem likely that she would require any artificial stimulation.

He asked her, "You're mixed up with the dope business, Jody. Do you take the stuff yourself?"

She laughed. "God, no! Oh, I diddled around with a few things when I was a kid but I never got up on the hook. Why? Would you care?"

"Why should I?"

A shadow of hurt touched her face. "Well, at least you asked. No, I can't get eyes for this going to pot in a hurry bit. I want to hold onto my figure and my

skin complexion. I've got things to do. I want to get rolling.''

She continued to chatter happily about her plans for the future, that personified idolized, future that would be waiting ready to take her by the hand in whatever shining metropoHs the bus finally deposited her. Modeling, dancing, acting . . . any avenue she chose would be wide open to her and all other traffic would get out of her way. She beheved in this so earnestly, as if saying so made it so, that fine beads of perspiration broke out on her upper hp and ghttered like sequins in the sun. She licked them away and kept talking with intensity.

David hstened, and if he hadn't known Jody so well, t he would have felt pity. It amazed him anew, that a girl ■ so practical in her cruelties could be so preposterous in her daydreaming. She was going to arrive broke and friendless in a hostile city, a young girl with no apparent talents and a criminal record. But all she could foresee was the grandeur of opportunity; to David it seemed more hke going to a doom.

They left the freeway and rolled down the Broad-^ way hill into downtown San Diego. The city slept in the sun hke a great gray cat. The closed stores stared blindly at empty sidewalks, the parking meters stood lonely along the curbs, each wearing its red "Expired" tag as if it were Sunday best. The sparse traffic was mainly buses and taxicabs. Only in front of theaters were there many people, patient queues made up mostly of sailors and marines who had tired of aimless wandering and window-shopping and were now awaiting the noon opening of the box offices. Cruising through the nearly desertea streets with the gleaming blonde at his side, David felt uneasy and exposed.

The bus station occupied most of the ground floor of a tall hotel. He parked in the next block and left Jody in the car while he walked back to inquire about a ticket. As usual, the terminal was bustling, servicemen leaving on furlough, civihans making ready to depart or waiting to greet an arrival. A large segment was filing through one doorway to board the weekend special to the horse races at Agua Cahente below the border. Some

children, playing tag, scampered noisily through this forest of legs and haphazardly piled luggage.

David joined the shortest of the lines at the ticket windows. As he'd told Jody, fifty dollars was all he had in cash so his initial objective was to find out just how far this much fare would take her. The column of people in front of him mov6d with wracking slowness. It seemed to him, fidgeting nervously, that each customer wanted a complete itinerary of all possible routes before he parted with any money.

Minutes jerked by on the big white-faced wall clock. He felt more and more stared at. He began making covert inspections of the mob around him, quickly shifting his gaze whenever by accident he caught somebody's eye. Gradually his attention began to dwell on a pair of men who loitered in the comer by the bank of rental lockers. He didn't see anything particularly noteworthy about either of them, both tall thickset expressionless men in ordinary business suits and straw hats. Yet somehow they looked a bit out of place, not really a part of the crowd. It struck David that, though they waited along with everybody else, they were not waiting for the same reasons, paying little heed to the roaring arrivals and depaitures of the buses. A team of two big men . . . David felt his sweat turn cold with realization. They were cops, plainclothesmen, waiting here for Jody to show up.

The ticket line moved haltingly and he moved with it but now all his awareness was focused fearfully on the two detectives. Their gaze, sweeping back and forth across the terminal, met his for a terrible instant and he heard his breath catch. He was disembodied, not here at all but dreaming the whole hellish thing in the frozen second it took for the inspection to pass on. He could breathe again. They hadn't really paid him any attention; they weren't looking for a man. Not yet. His mind suggested an antidote to his anxiety: perhaps they're not actually cops at all. And even if they are, it might not be Jody they're looking for. There's a hundred other reasons they might . . .

Abruptly, the two men started away from the lockers. In imison, they strode across the depot toward the

women's restroom. A teenage girl had just emerged, carrying a small suitcase. They each took her by an elbow, not roughly but firmly, and guided her over to their lookout comer. David watched them, repelled but fascinated, as if he had seen two monstrous spiders dart out of their web to seize a songbird. And now they were eating her alive but he was unable to hear the low-voiced conversation.

"Can I help you?" rang in his ear. He turned, startled, to discover that he had at last reached the ticket window.

'Tes, I . . . Just a minute." He rubbed a hand across his bewildered face, unable to remember immediately his purpose in coming here. "Oh. What's the fare to— to Chicago, say?" he managed finally. Across the depot, the detectives were examining the youngster's identification. She looked strained and frightened. Worst of all, David realized, she didn't resemole Jody Drew in the sliglitest. That meant that the police were stopping all girls of her general age. They probably expected that she would cnange her appearance. So the blonde hair was a wholly futile disguise.

"Well?" the clerk wanted to know. "Lot of people waiting. Do you want a ticket to Chicago or dont you.-^

"I guess not," David mumbled. "Sorry." He hadn't even heard the price of the ticket. He hurried away from the window, jostling through the crowd. At the door, he cast one quick anxious glance back. The detectives were still questioning the girl, unaware of his existence. He headed for his car along the sidewalk shimmering with heat mirages, walking faster and faster until he was almost running.

"What wrong?" Jody asked. "Didn't you get the ticket?"

"Police," he told her, panting. 'Watching the place." He swung into the car and rested against the steering wheel.

"No kidding?" She was more flattered than alarmed.

'Tou don't understand. I saw them stop a girl. She didn't look anything like you. That bleach job isn't going to fool anybody."

Jody peeked at herself in the mirror, eyes dancing

as she fluffed up her hair. "I guess the apes want to catch me pretty bad. Probably they don't get to chase a cute girl very often, they're hard up probably." She

figgled at some private picture in her mind. "Well, iller, what do we do now?"

"How the hell should I knowl Give me some time to think."

"Aw, don't get mad," she cooed, learning her soft torso against his arm.

He elbowed her away and desperately tried to reason. He couldn't make his brain behave. He had counted so greatly on being finally rid of the girl that this setback was crushing, depriving him temporarily of the power of thought. But he had to come up with something. By clenching his jaw until his teeth ached, by making the will to think a conscious physical effort, he forced himself to consider other avenues of escape and presently a possibiHty occurred to him. He started the engine.

"We going back home again?" Jody guessed.

"No. I'll drive you up the coast, to Oceanside. There's another bus station there. They probably won't be expecting you to turn up there, forty miles away."

"Real smoky." She patted his leg approvingly. "I knew I could count on my David. Comes to picking out men, I'm usually right."

They reached the shining waters of the harbor, the only movement a liberty boat coming ashore and a few drifting gulls. He turned north along the coast highway, through the aiicraft district, past the thousand disapproving windows of his own plant until the city ended abruptly at the mouth of Rose Canyon. Oceanside was nearly an hour's drive away, through chaparral hills and sunny little beach communities, and David found himself counting the minutes. Sixty of them and she would be gone from his life, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven . , .

"Ah, this is more like it," Jody said. "Everything a blur." That was when he saw that the speedometer needle was quivering close to eighty. David began to slow down along a straightaway that bordered the frolicking surf. This was no time to get a ticket. But the rear-view mirror reflected no pursuit. However, on the highway ahead, it puzzled him to see the other

automobiles also losing speed. The slow-down became a crawl, then a full stop.

"Must be an accident or something." He craned his neck out the wiudow. The line of cars stretched for some distance down the road, past a rise on which a service station stood, and out of sight beyond it. A few of the more irritable drivers began to honk their horns, as if that impatient braying would miraculously clear the way.

To David, it was the bus depot wait all over again. As before, the line inched forward, then halted for agonizing intervals. Without the breeze of driving, the car quickly heated up inside, an atmosphere that seemed too thick and heavy for the lungs to manage. Tody fidgeted and cussed under her breath, and David began feeling Hke banging on his own horn. After all, Oceanside—and salvation—lay only twenty minutes away, and it was a personal rebuff, a deliberate unfairness tnat the highway should be jammed bumper-to-bumper at this particular crucial time.

At last his straining to see ahead and his drumming of fingers and peevish sighs that were almost growls brought the station wagon to the crest of the little hill, and he could see what was delaying him. Half a mile distant, purposely located at a spot where it would not be discovered until the last minute, was a roadblock in operation. On each side of the highway stood an ojfficial car, red lights blinking on their roofs. Portable yellow warning signs Hke sawhorses funneled the traffic past uniformed men who scanned each automobile's occupants.

"Cops?" asked Jody soberly.

"I can't tell this far away," David said. "Might be only the border patrol." They often established surprise check points in this area to screen illegal entrants from Mexico. Yet it could just as easily be the police, searching for Tody, and the thought of risking the gamble knottea up his stomach. For that matter, there was nothing to prevent the border patrol being part of the police dragnet in addition to their immigration duties.

He couldn't chance it. He held back the station wagon

until there was clearance in front of him and the driver behind him was tooting for him to for God's sake get moving. Then he swung the car across the southbound lanes in a U-turn that brought him into the filling station.

"What are you doing, David?"

"What do you thiiik? They never just check one highway. They block them all at the same time."

The station attendant, a lanky young fellow with a crewcut and a grin, leaned down to peer inquiringly through the car window. "Fill it up," David said. He didn't need the gas but a pause at the service station might make their flight less obvious, in case anyone had noticed their hasty retreat. And he needed a moment's respite; his hands were too sHppery with fear to grip the steering wheel and the knot in his belly was ready to bend him double. Without a word to the girl, he stumbled around to the rear of the boxhke buildiug, its painted steel walls a furnace to the touch.

In the tainted gloom of the men's room, he turned on die cold water and began splashing it on his face. *T didn't get caught," he whispered. "I didn't get caught.'' And it no longer seemed out of the ordinary that David Patton should be thinking like that. Gradually, his belly loosened and untied, making him grateful that he wasn't going to be nauseated twice in the same day. He stood up straight and the grimy warped mirror showed him a stranger every bit as grimy, every bit as warped. He turned away from it.

Outside, where the sun burned down on the softening blacktop, he couldn't see Jody anywhere around. The young station attendant had disappeared, too. David checked his car. The tank had been replenished and capped and the pump meter registered $1.25.

He looked around, bewildered. Later, he realized that his first reaction should have been a sense of freedom, of escape. But at the time, that spUt second of aloneness, he felt only that his companion was missing, that he must find her. He was growing used to her.

When he heard her laugh throatily, he hurried iato the station. Jody was leaning over a road map spread out on the table, pretending to study it but actually breath-

ing gently on the young man s cheek. And he, by her side, was tracing the most convenient route to Las Vegas and letting his eyes wander over the front of her dress.

At David's first clanging footstep on the steel floor, the boy straightened and, although red-faced, assumed a brisk air of efficiency. "All set, sir. That'll be a buck and a quarter for the gas. Your oil's okay." He folded up the map and offerea it to Jody. "You can take this along if you like."

"Hey, thank you," she murmured. As she took the map, her fingertips lingered on the soft flesh between his thumb and forefinger. "So sweet of you."

"Nothing." He hcked his lips and his gaze stuck with her as she swayed out to the car. He scarcely noticed the money that David gave him.

David didn't speak to the girl until he found a gap in the southbound traffic and they were heading back toward San Diego. "You know, it'd be ludicrous if it wasn't so damn idiotic."