Kitten with a whip (19 page)

David closed the door behind him but beyond that had no immediate reaction to the situation. No crafty subter-

fuge leaped into his mind, as he had been fearing. It bothereci him a little that his thinking processes didn't seem to be moving forward at all, that he seemed unable to assess properly the present facts. He felt more like an intruder into a place in time that didn't actually concern him. He noticed that Buck still stood on Jodys hand, keeping her piimed down. He realized that Buck had somehow predicted the girl's pattern of thought, had known that she would hole up somewhere nearby; all he'd had to do was tour the lodging places until he spotted the station wagon. Evidently, being her husband, he was able to understand her reasoning or lack of it more than David had beHeved possible.

Merely to be doing something, David moved sideways to the bureau and set the bottle on it. He had an inexplicable desire to be unencumbered., Beside the bottle, on the mended runner, he saw his car keys. Jody watched him anxiously. He had no idea what she was waiting for or expected of him.

Buck said, ^'You're next in Hne, fatso. Soon as I mess up our little bitch here."

Our little bitch . . . The threat, the insult sounded mechanical, even trivial. Strangely, it was the our that sounded important to David's ear, the implied camaraderie between himself and Buck that Buck had recognized on some primitive level of his subconscious. He and Buck were primitive kinfolk—brother enemies, perhaps, but brothers nonetheless. David tried to absorb this new view of things, at the same time knowing that he had been given a covert invitation to flee. His keys lay attractively on the dresser, not twelve inches away from his hand. All he had to do was snatch them up and run. There would be no interference, no pursuit, and he would be free at last. These other people could settle their own affairs and to hell with them.

Buck waited in fierce impatience, shoulders hunched. David glanced again at the white expanse of fear in Tody's eyes, then pulled his gaze away. He didn't owe ner a tmng.

He had made up his mind. And the arrival at that sensible conclusion—the decision to escape at last-brought him square up against the stone-waU reality

of his own character. He couldn't go through with it. He didn't owe Jody a thing, quite the opposite. But he couldn't run out on her now. There still existed the compUcation known as simple humanity, and that was the thing he owed himself.

He heard his voice snap, "Get away from her before I break your neck."

Buck jerked with a surprise even greater than David's own. ^TTou're kiddingl"

"like heU."

Buck laughed, raised his hands threateningly and sidled toward the center of the room. Tody, let loose, swiEtly rolled under the bed. Buck paid no attention. His expression was more pleased than angry as he advanced on David. "Okay, you're first then."

David threw the bottle. Buck dodged lithely and it boimced oflF the opposite wall to fall to the floor unbroken. "Quit scariug me," Buck mocked.

David said, "Better beat it while you can, Idd." From his coat pocket, he pulled Buck's knife. His finger found the button and the blade leaped forth, shining.

"I'll clue you, fatso. I know you. You haven't got the guts." Buck sprang at him, one forearm upright and on guard.

He was right and David knew it. The knife was only a bluff. The hand that held it was bound by a lifetime of impressions and inhibitions. Bare fists were all right, a club was all right, a bottle was all right providing it was used as a club. But a knife was an unthinkable weapon used only by sneaks. It was out of the question, immoral, like attacking from behind. Buck's belly was exposed to the sharp point as he lunged forward, but David hesitated and the chance was gone forever. They met in a heavy shock of flesh and the knife was driven from his grasp. He heard it skittering away across the uncarpeted floor.

They fell onto the bare boards and the impact knocked them apart. David scrambled to rise again. He was stiU on his hands and knees when he became aware of the amazing frightening fact that Buck, all young eager muscle, had bounded up almost instantly. Already Buck was aiming a kick at his face. He bobbed his head aside

barely in time, felt the shoe graze his cheek, leaving a hot hurting streak. He scuttled at the twin columns of Buck's legs, grabbed them around the knees and then both of them were tangled on the floor again.

This time David sprang up first. He heard Jody screaming at him from under the bed. She was telling him to use his feet while Buck was stiU down. "Kick him, for God sakes! Stomp on him! Oh, DavidH Her voice was infuriated but he backed off a pace and let his opponent rise. They were grown men, in size anyway. This was the way men fought, fairly and face to face, another inhibition ground into him since childhood's earliest cowboy movie. It was a reflex, not a thought or even a principle. They weren't animals; he would never be so cruel as to maim anybody.

Buck was a nightmare from outside that known world of right and wrong. Rising, he grabbed a pillow off the bed and hurled it into Davids face. Blinded, David doubled over in pure agony as a fist slammed into his crotch. Then a kneecap cracked up against his chin and he fell flat, unable to focus on the dancing walls, the triple images of the furniture, the huge blurred vision of Buck diving on him.

He still fought back; at least he flung his arms about, trying to ward off the fists that battered him everywhere. Shadow-fists that caused terrible pain yet still were no more than flickers across the eye-stinging white aureole of the ceiling bulb that he stared up at. He could see no more than an outline of Buck's head, although he could hear him panting and making triumphant animal noises. And somewhere Jody was shrieking at him. Animals, that's what they all were, and this particular whipped animal—himself—was gradually being beaten to death.

Kill or be killed. Somebody sobbed because he didn't want to be killed.

He knew the brink of unconsciousness as he came near to it. His hands clawed forth for something to hang onto and he seized Buck's skivvy shirt. His hands began to climb and his mind cleared. He knew how much older he was than Buck, how much more overweight and out of condition. He knew achingly how

much punishment he had aheady absorbed and that he could not possibly win. All he had in his favor was a refusal to be killed.

They were animals and his claws reached Buck's panting throat and drew blood. They climbed higher and tore his ear. Buck whimpered at that, and then David had hold of his long blond liair with both hands. He dragged the head down toward him, lower and lower, until Buck's blows became clumsy and feeble. He no longer had the leverage or distance to make good use of his fists. David hauled the face up close to his own and began beating it rhythmically against his forehead, jerking it down, butting at it. He felt the boy's nose break, felt the hot blood spill into his eyes.

A tortured yell and Buck rolled free. David wiped his eyes clear, tottered to his feet and shambled after his enemy. He concentrated hard and the hurt drained out of him. The only thing worthy of his awareness was Buck and getting hit and kicked meant nothing by comparison. David wrapped his arms around him and sank his teeth into Buck's shoulder. His head was shoved loose, they broke apart and charged into each other again.

There was no passage of time, no memory even of why he was fighting. The dripping red film that blurred his tiny world could have been his own ferocious rage or blood drawn from either of them. He grew weary of plodding about, scratching, battering, ramming, but at last the moment came, the grand moment when he realized he was winning. Buck was no longer trying to hurt him, only trying to push him away. The boy's limp was real now, not a posture of distinction. In one of their floor-bound scuflBes, David had tried to break the enemy's leg across his own, using both hands as with a piece of kindling wood. The once-pretty hair, now lank with sweat and blood, hung down over Buck's forehead. His nose was smashed to one side and the comers of his mouth were torn. His right eye had closed redly, an oozing thumb mark gouged beneath it. And his remaining eye now wept wim stark fear.

David shook with the thrill of victory. He had undergone the worst the enemy could inflict on him and it

hadn't been enough. He was the king of the forest, and Buck was backing away, chest heaving as he tried to rescue enough breath to speak. David had no intention of letting him beg; victory was too near and too dehcious to resist. He hugged the boy close with all his might and threw him to the floor again. They thrashed about as his hands closed around Buck's throat.

Buck stopped struggling. His arms fell away limply. His Hps moved, bubbling pinkly, but no sound came out.

David pushed groggily to his feet and waited for his own breath to come back. He stared down at what he had done and croaked, "Okay—now get out of here."

Buck didn't stir, except his legs which twitched convulsively and then were stiU. David knelt beside him, wondering if he had fainted. And then he saw the knife, Buck's own knife. The handle protruded from the bloodied skivvy shirt under his left armpit.

Jody had scrambled out from under the bed, now sat on the edge of it, watching. David looked at her and knew. "You did it," he panted. "When we were fighting on the floor. You got hold of his knife."

"I had to. It was my only chance."

^Why?" he cried. "You didn't have to! I had him lickedl"

"Take a look at yourself."

He got up off his knees and went to the mirror. He allowed for the warp in the glass and still could not recognize the face that blinked back at him. He raised his hands and the red-painted savage in the mirror did the same. That way he could be sure of the person he was looking at. With his fingers and daubing with his handkerchief, he began exploring his features, the gashes and swellings and mottled bruises. Stuck to the palm of one hand he discovered a hank of blond hair, bloody at the roots. He cast it aside impatiently and turned around and looked at Buck on the floor. "He's dead," David murmured.

"I couldn't tell who was winning," complained Jody.

^^ou killed him. You actually killed him."

"Well, he was going to kill me!"

He glared at her. "God damn you, anyway." He

knew he was still out of his mind. His single emotion was his anger at her theft of his victory. With Buck he had passed his point of maximum stress without breaking and it was a thing for a man to be proud of but she had ruined it all.

He crossed the room to pick up the bottle of whisky. He used the saw-tooth edge of his car key to break the seal and took a long scalding drink. It hit, making him shudder, and he began to come back to his senses. The world had three dimensions again and everything Was real, the shabby motel room, Jody and himself, the tragically dead youngster on the floor. "He was your husband."

Jody gazed at the body thoughtfully. "He never was any good at anything." David had never seen her look so cold and apart from life. Nothing had changed about her; she was still the blonde sharp-faced girl with the nicely developing figure and the interesting amber eyes. But now he could see past her eyes and into the dreadful void within her. She was hollow, non-human, different—siS any creature lacking warm blood is different and to some degree an object of revulsion. Jody was as alien a creature as a snake or a corpse, and fearing her was nothing to be ashamed of.

David said, "Im going. I can't stand to look at him any longer."

"You better wash up first. I'll wait for you in the car.

He shook his head. "No. This is the end of the line, Jody. Fm not going to get involved in a miurder. Here, 1*11 give you what's left of my money and youll have to get along on your own from now on."

"It's not mat simple, David."

"You killed him. I didn't."

"You ought to take a better look at yourself," she said pleasantly. "You're the guy who looks like he's done a killing, not me. Who's going to beHeve different? Especially when they find out he's my husband and that you and me are shacked up here as man and wife. Juicy, huh?"

He felt the walls close in on him. Every word she spoke was knife-sharp with truth. The setup was so ob-

vious. He had been here making love to another man's wife and when the husband caught them at it, he had killed him. It was undeniably true. It could be proved. Hoarsely, he asked, "You'd tell them that?"

*1 don't want to teU anybody anything, as long as there's another way out. And there is." She smiled, happy with herselr, inviting him to remember. "Oh, you Know, David, what I was talking about a while fcack. I mean, there's no more reason now why you can't drive me to Mexico City, is there?"

Chapter Seventeen

They sped east through Agua Caliente, passing the looming grandstand of the racetrack, deserted at this hour and looking in the dark like the ruins of an ancient city.

Leaving the motel had presented no difficulties. Once David had bathed his face with cold water, it had been a mere matter of switching off the light and quietly locking the door behind them. Buck still lay where he had died, not even a person any more, only a terrible surprise for someone sooner or later. David had left the key to the cabin in plain view on the dresser, thinking at the time how ridiculous an act of consideration it was, one small civilized gesture in the midst of that bloody death-haunted shambles.

He still found it incredible that no one heard the commotion or, at least, no one had cared enough to investigate it. A dim night-lamp in the manager's empty office had been the only hght showing on the premises. Either the noise of the struggle hadnt carried very far or the neighborhood was used to that sort of thing.

He was only a little less surprised that his injuries didn't pain him more than they did. His face was puffy and cut-up and sore but he could see perfectiy well out of both eyes even though the right one had already discolored. His speech sounded ^a little thick as it passed through his gashed and swollen Hps but it didn't hurt too much to talk. He considered Himself lucky to have gotten off without a broken nose. His body ached all over in different throbbing tempos but the worst place was on his left side, a piercing pain every time he forgot and took a deep breath. He supposed one of Buck's kicks had broken a rib. As it was, he knew he was pretty well marked up but not so badly that he couldn't drive. And, one of the vagaries of the hiunan mind under stress, he was less bothered by his injuries than by the

156

knowledge that he had burst both shoulder seams in the back of his coat. His favorite sport coat . . . what would Virginia have to say about tnatF'

If he ever saw Virginia again. It was a bitter thought and he knew he didn't really believe in it. He thoudit, for two bits Vd slam this car off into the ditch and kill both of us, but he didn't beheve in that, either. It was just that the nightmare had to end some time, somewhere. He couldn't even make himself consider that his life as he knew it was all over, that he would spend the rest of his days enslaved by this preposterous girl. Yet his brain felt ready to burst with trying to figure a way out and everv moment that he couldn't, he hated Jody that mucn more.

"Why don't you say something?" she asked peevishly. "Sit there Hke a four-letter goon."

He grunted. He didn't even want to talk to her.

"Is me heater on?"

"No."

"WeU, it's sure hot." She pulled her skirt up her legs and spread her thighs to cool them. "I wish at least you'd have let me bring the whisky along. I could've held it in my lap. I could've made sure none would leak out in the car."

"Oh, pipe down." Go crap.

The black air rushed in through his open window, pushed against his face with a continuous pressure. It was thick oppressive stuflF with the stale warmth of exhaust fumes. It was air that tasted used-up and scarcely fit to breathe. It was dying air, the last foul gasp of a poisoned day. It matched, was even part of, David's raw emotions.

They roared by small truck farms and through im-Ughtea crossroads communities and began the climb into the mountains, the long chain of sierras that was the spine of Baja California. They crossed Rodriguez Dam and skirted the shores of the sprawling reservoir, the only car on the road.

Jody squirmed restlessly. "I don't think anybody saw us take oflF, do you?"

"No."

"Then what you so broke up about? Chances are they won't find him till tomorrow afternoon when they go to change the beds or something. By that time we'll be halfway to Mexico City/'

"Oh, sure."

"Hey, you know that Mexicans just call it Mexico, no City after it at all? Like if Washington, D.C.—our capital, you know?—was called the United States of America. I don't see how they keep it straight."

"I suppose you know all there is to know about Mexico, huh? The coimtry, I mean."

"Well, I've gotten around," she said confidently. "Enough not to let the Mexican cops bug me any. Is that what's got you scared, David?" She giggled. 'They'll stick their noses in it, sure, but that old bat who waited on us was half-blind and when they find Mr. and Mrs. Vogel on the register, they won't laiow but what Buck checked in there witb some other lay. And with that San Diego address they'll start looting north while all the time we'U be heading the other way. Like clever, huh?"

"Yeah." But David hadn't been thinking of the Mexican police, rather of the Mexican roads. In his younger days, he had gone fishing occasionally on the Gulf of California, but not for years, since Virginia didn't care for the sport. The point was that he thought he knew the country a lot better than Jody did. She might have played footsie all over the border towns but she didn't understand the one basic fact that all travelers in Mexico soon learned: a network of highways such as Americans take for granted just didn't exist. The old tag-line —you can't get there from here—took on a practical and often maddening significance south of the border.

As, for example, tonight. The highway they traveled looked as innocent as the dark itself; well-graded and paved, it appeared to stretch on forever. But David couldn't be sure. He had a vague remembrance of reading within the last year or two that Mexico was intensifying its highway construction program but his last positive recollection was that this particular road crossed the mountains to Mexicali and that was all. The border city of Mexicali, larger than Tijuana, offered airline and

train service to the capital but automobile travel had always been out of the question. So far as David knew, Mexicali was still the jumping-off place, the dead end.

This was not to say that it was impossible to drive to Mexico City but it would be necessary to cross into Califomia again and then leave Caliiomia to enter Arizona and pick up the all-weather highway at its northern end. But that route was out of the question. Even if Jod/s low opinion of the Mexican poHce were true, which he doubted, there remained the matter of the dragnet on the California side. He wrestled with the knots of this problem while knowing on a deeper plane that he would never deUver Jody to Mexico City. That was a growing truth, whatever its impUcations or outcome. He was stretched as far as he could go. He was driving east to give himself time to think but he already knew he could never be made to turn south.

So MexicaU would be the end of the line, highway or no highway. Mexicali ... or some lonely place even closer.

He glanced at Jody to see if she had read his mind but she was gazing straight ahead pensively. Not that he had reached a conclusion in any recognizable form. It was still coming toward him, it waited somewhere down the dark road beyond the probing headlights, but he couldn't yet quite maJce it out.

"Funny rat-race," Jody mused, as if making a discovery. "Buck and me, we got married in Tijuana, you know thatr

"Why should I know?"

"Well, we were. Please don't snap at me, David. All of a sudden, I don t know why, I'm blowing lonesome."

"Okay." He changed his tone for fear of giving his feelings away.

"I was only fifteen." She spoke as if that, two or three ^^ears ago, was analagous to her kindergarten days. *Buck and me and another couple a httle older. We got ourselves hotted up one night and we were doing it anyway so we sneaked across the border and got married, all of us. It was sort of a joke in one way, and yet it wasn't. God, when I think how anxious I was, it makes me sick enough to heave."

"What are you getting at?"

''Nothing, just tninking back. I was sure dumb back then, dumb in big red letters. Those days, all I looked for in a boy was his muscles, not what he could do for me. Buck had plenty of muscles, all right. I'd hate to coimt how many times he beat me up." She showed her teeth mirthlessly. "Maybe you can see why I m not feeling sorry for him now."

David saw more than that. If this latest version of her past was true, he could see Buck's side of it, how she must have goaded and tormented him in a hundred small ways, her wits more than a match for his, imtil at last, every day attacked by needles, he had resorted to the only weapons he possessed, his fists. David felt again his Hkeness and his kinship to Buck. They had both made the same mistake, getting entangled with Jody. The boy had paid with his life. It made David wonder what his bill had come to, how soon it would be presented.

Jody still brooded. "I ran into Carol a couple months

ago. She used to speU it with a Y in it, hke a movie star,

but she doesn't any more. She was the other girl that

night, the one that got married the same time as me.

Gee, she must be nineteen or twenty now. Les is doing

his time in the Army and they got a baby, a boy, the

cutest Httle fellow you ever did see. And all the time

I was talking to her—she was buying a stroller—I kept

thinking it should've been me, instead. God, if I hadn't

been so dumb back then, thinking of nothing but hot

pants." She looked up at him, her face crinkled with seH-

3iW. "David, I can't ever have a baby. I was just

adding this morning about maybe you getting me

mocked up."

"It's you you're kidding. You don't want a baby and you know it."

"It doesn't matter. You wouldn't believe me, anything I said. But I'm going to have something of my own and you can really walk on that." Her hands in her lap clenched in fierce little claws. "All I need is a couple breaks, good and fancy, and I'm going to get them, too. I can feel luck squirming inside."

He snorted. "Congratulations. You want to hear some-

thing else funny. Saturday morning all I thought I wanted was a little excitement. Okay, laugh."

"Why bother? I wish you hked me, David. I wish for a change you'd try to see what I want. Just don t start layiQg on the preaching bit, whatever you do."

He didn't intend to. His own imderstanding was all that mattered. It might be too late but it was better to learn his lesson than ignore it. Don't always be yearning to play the long odds. Ninety per cent of life is coming to terms with what you've got. Pride is the first requisite, of course, but don't be asnamed to bend a Httle when the wind is strong. Just Hving, really knowing how deep it can run and how high it can fly, is adventure enough. Not that you have to bund yoinrselJf if you sight the towers of gold but be certain you can map the country in-between. Every feelina is valid in some way, he told himself, every answer has a piece of the truth imbedded in it. Now that I know what I really want, I already have, and that it means everything to me, enough that Vd he willing to . . .

. . . to kill to keep it. That was tonight's answer, the finish. It had been lurking there just outside the range of his thoughts until now, without his willing it, there it was. It was the obvious, the not uncommon declaration that everybody used occasionally without real meaning. But tonight he could feel the threat taking hard shape, emerging naked and deadly. It was savage and it was simple. Jody blocked the road between him and his happiness. Tody would have to be removed.

She was being quiet again, thinking her own thoughts against the backdrop of passing hiUs. She didn't sense vmat was going on inside him. He took a deep breath of final decision, winced at the stitch in his left side, and began planning. At first he distrusted the easiness of it, then he gradually became aware that its very simphcity was its principal virtue.

He was more than a match for her physically; he wouldn't even need a weapon, his bare hands would suffice. Then, a shallow grave somewhat removed from the road—he could dig that with one of the car tools— and amid this rocky desolation, who would ever find her? A coyote perhaps, but the police?—not for months or

years. And afterward, what of afterward? There was no worthwhile connection between him and Jody on the American side. Nor were the Mexican police looking for him. The nearsighted old woman at the motel knew only that Mr. and Mrs. Buck Vogel had registered. Mr. Buck Vogel was now dead; the search would be only for Mrs. Buck Vogel, the fugitive Jody Drew. None of this had anything to do with David Patton of Knoll Valley. He could return to his home—alone.

He began studying what he could see of the road ahead. They had reached the summit of the sierra and sped along on fairly level ground, rolling country heavily bearded with sagebrush and scrub-oak. By what he could remember from roadmaps, he guessed they were approaching the mountain town of Tecate, a quiet little place noted principally for its brewery. There was a border gate there but it did little traffic and was closed at night. And he didn't want to tempt fate by returning to Tijuana. No, better to continue on to Mexicali where the bars never closed and one more American passing through immigration wouldn't be noticed. He would miss meeting Virginia's plane but he had a flock of explanations to think up, anyway. Maybe, driving home on the American side, he should stop and batter the grill of the station wagon with a rock. Then he could conjure up some tale about running ofiF into a ditch and that would accoimt for his marked-up face too. There was a way out of everything.

First, though . . .

Jody said, *What's with this slowing down? You feeling bad?^

"A little."

"Well, pull over and let me drive. I don't go for spending the rest of my life in these silly mountains."

The rest of her life—as if it was meant to be. He slowed the station wagon jerkily; every muscle in his body was taut with expectation. They came to a stop on the shoulder of the road. He switched off the engine.