One Fearful Yellow Eye (30 page)

"Heavens!" said Anna Ottlo. "What a small world it is after all."

The man opened a jalousied door and pushed Heidi in and followed her. Heidi massaged the hand he had been holding and she stared at me and then at Anna and then back at me. "Tray, what are they... He walked me and said such terrible things to me. Anna, my God, what are you trying to..."

"I asked her name and she told -me," Perry said. He stood beaming. His bald head was sunburned and peeling. He wore a sport shirt of pillow ticking, dark blue walking shorts, white canvas boat shoes. He wore his stomach high. It looked solid. He had meaty and muscular forearms, and spindly, hairy, pipestem legs. He had little brown eyes, a broad flattened nose, and a heavy sensuous mouth. "She made it too easy. I see you're breathing again, sonny," he said, turning toward me and giving me a quick little wink.

Anna shook her head. "How perfectly delicious, Perry. Dear Heidi. The arrogant bitch of all time. Why make her bed when old Anna could do it? Drop the clothes where you take them off.

Never carry a plate to the kitchen. The cool, golden, superior princess."

"Anna! You don't have any accent at all."

"What a marvel! What a miracle! Stupid housekeeper. What a treat to have you here, Miss
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Heidi." Heidi lifted her chin. "Stop this nonsense at once and take that tape off Mr. McGee."

Anna faked vast astonishment. "Is that an order?"

"I think I made it quite clear."

"Perry, if you could teach this child to sing us a little song, I think her manners would be better."

"My pleasure," Perry said, with a little bow. He moved over in front of Heidi, his pudgy back toward me. He hooked one arm around her and yanked her close and busied the other hand between them. I could see the elbow turning and working.

Heidi gave a harsh gasp of shock and outrage, then her eyes and mouth opened wide and she flapped her arms weakly at the plump shoulders of the man and gave a squalling sound of pain and fright.

He let her go. She staggered, going so pale her tan looked gray-green. Her face was shiny with sweat: She took two weak steps to an aluminum and plastic chaise and half fell onto it and bowed her head all the way to her knees, flax hair aspill.

"A pretty little song, dear," Anna said. "Now mind your mouth." She 'spoke to Perry in a fast guttural rattle of German. He answered and seemed to ask her a question. She thought, shrugged, gave a longer speech and he nodded, gave a short answer, gestured toward Heidi.

Anna responded and he went beaming to her and picked up one hand and hauled her to her feet.

He put an arm around her and led her into the house proper. She gave me a gray, lost, hopeless look as he led her by me. In a cooing little voice he said, "Tender little dearie. Dainty little dearie."

"Hardly little," Anna said. "She's a half-head taller than he is. You couldn't have made him happier." "Look. She got a case of the hots and I made the mistake of letting her come back to Florida with me. She doesn't know anything about anything. She's a clumsy lay, and she's a bore."

"Perry won't be bored."

I heard a sharp thin high scream from somewhere inside the house. Anna looked irritated and yelled some kind of an order in German. He answered in a placating tone.

"Now he'll go get your truck and bring it around," she said. "All he was supposed to do was secure her in there. They have a charming little practice here in Marco Bay Mr. McGee. We all have these little round signs on sharp sticks that we can stick in the ground out at the end of the driveway to show we are taking naps. They. say Hush, Friend on them. Nobody ever violates the rule. Perry stuck ours in when he went to get Miss Heidi."

"Did both of you work on Saul Gorba?"

"Just Perry. Saul was a fool. Very smart and very sly, but careless and impulsive. Hard to control. He couldn't see why it was best he should marry Gretchen. We did not wish to alarm him by telling him that if the Doctor became stubborn it would be necessary to arrange certain accidents so that in the end Susan would be the only heir. Perry is very skilled at such things. But
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the Doctor decided not to be stubborn. I knew how much money there would be. I knew how long he thought he might live. I knew his warm feeling for Mrs. Stanyard, and knew when she visited her husband. I knew many useful things. Perry found that farm for them, a place good for our purposes. We needed Saul Gorba for certain risky things, like taking Braniy for the ride, like breaking into Mrs. Stanyard's apartment to do the thing with the cat. And he was very good at documents. Perry and Wilma Hennigan are very welldocumented people. Saul had a great greed for money. It was amusing to discuss it with him in. German. Stupid Gretchen had lost almost all of her German. Saul taught me how to wire the noisemaker to Gloria's little automobile. And, of course, when the gift of candy was in the house, I opened it carefully and fixed a special treat for Miss Heidi."

"Why did Dr. Geis set up Mrs: Stanyard for Susan to go to if she needed help?"

"There was a certain threat made against the girl, a nastiness to be done to her. This was over the telephone, you understand. That is how negotiations were handled. A whisper over a pay telephone, by Saul, of course. We told him what to say. We frequently... encouraged the Doctor in that way." She bit her lip. "I could not say. Perhaps Saul was a little too convincing when he spoke of the girl. At any rate, I saw the letter before it was mailed to Mrs. Stanyard. I told Saul about it, and the fool told Susan he knew where she'd. go for help, after he had beaten..."

Perry came out onto the sun porch from the main part of the. house. They carried on a lengthy conversation. I got the impression she made a suggestion he did not like, and he made a series of alternate suggestions. She turned every one down, firmly. He pouted like a fat child. She gave him a lit tle lecture, a teasing tone in her voice. He shrugged, smiled, brightened up and went back into the house.

Anna said, "Poor disappointed man. He has all the rest of the day and into the night for both of you, and I have told him that under no circumstances must you he marked, either of you." She got up and came over and bent to peer at my throat. She rubbed it briskly with the flat of her hand and went back to her chair saying, "That will not be noticeable." She sat down and picked up her knitting: "We have decided to hold your faces down in a basin of salt water from the bay so that the lungs will be proof of death by drowning. And tonight late we shall undress you both on a quiet beach we found that is twenty miles from here, and put your clothing on the seat of that truck of yours and push you into the sea and drive back in our car together. A blanket on the beach and perhaps some beer, that will add conviction."

I heard Heidi's voice whimpering and pleading. Anna smiled. "I told him it is a test of his ingenuity. Many things can be managed. At least he has time, not the way it was with Gretchen when Saul called up in panic to say she had guessed what he had been up to and was threatening to take the children and leave. He had only one hour with her." A sudden harsh hoarse cry of anguish from Heidi sickened me. It sounded effortful enough to tear her throat.

"His little bird sings well for him. You understand, of course, about people like Perry. I like a bit of it, for amusement. But to him it is necessary. A sexual orientation, I suppose. First there must be the gross humiliations, the unthinkable violations of the precious citadel of self, with pain as the spice and fright as the sauce. But he will have to do with what variations he can invent on that theme, because he cannot have what he likes best, to create those moments of ultimate hopeless horror when his companion experiences damage she knows cannot be undone, cannot be mended, and then begins to wonder how long he or she will be forced to sustain the burden of consciousness and of life itself."

Out of the silence Heidi began to make an explosive sound, a kind of squealing grunting sound repeated over and over in abrupt jolting rhythm, then dying slowly away.

Anna listened with tilted head, half-smile. "Ah, he is a rascal, that one!"

My heart was breaking for Heidi. All the silky luxuries of her, and the sense of fun, and all her quick sure hungers.

"Listen, Anna. Make him stop. Please. I'll make a deal. I got to the farm before the police did. I found what Perry couldn't find. Maybe the figure is proof enough. A hundred and seventy-eight thousand, six hundred and fifty. I kept it. I'll make a deal. If she has to die, okay, but no more of him. Make it easy for her and I'll tell you where it is and how you can get it in absolute safety"

She put the knitting aside, next to the revolver on the table beside her chair. "Poor Saul thought he would keep that money. He could not know he was only holding it for us until it was time to leave. Then he lost his silly head over that juicy little wench and after beating her in a temper, let her sneak away. So when he found out she was gone, he went to a pay phone and called me late that Monday afternoon and I told him to get the children out of the house, to leave them with friends."

"God! God! God!" Heidi cried, her voice rusted almost shut.

"Stop him," I yelled.

"Where was the money Mr. McGee?"

"Hidden in dings he put into the fenders and body and covered over with plastic and painted.

Stop him. Please!"

With half-smile and half-frown she said, "But I'd have to give him a reason. Saul died after just a few hours. Perry was furious. He searched as long as he dared and then came back. It would be nice to have that money, but not really essential. I think you must have given it to Mr. Andrus anyway. If I called Perry and told him such nonsense he would just say that when he finishes with her and gets to you, you will tell him everything you know anyway, so what is the point? I wouldn't think of spoiling his pleasure."

Then came a cry from Heidi more horrid than anything which had gone before. It was a wild straining, climbing, gargling croak that stopped with a sickening abruptness.

Anna pushed herself to her feet, scowling. "Now I don't think he could get that much effect unless he has..."

The blackest anger and total despair can give you what you need for superhuman effort, if you can focus it and direct it. I yanked my feet back, lunged up, and stood in precarious balance, hunched in the aluminum embrace of the chair. And I went at her, hoppity-hop, grunting, fighting for balance. I had the vague idea of charging into her, knocking her down, and getting my teeth into her fat neck.

With a look of alarm she turned to reach for the pistol. I had lost my balance on the last hop and as I started to fall forward, I gave a final thrust and felt my head ram the softness of her belly, heard the air grunt out of her. I fell onto my side, the aluminum clattering onto the terrazzo, and
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saw her stagger back, turn half around to catch her balance, trip as one foot came out of a zori, take two little running steps, head down, and then dive.

Her brick-red head hit the window wall section perhaps two feet from the bottom. It punched a huge shard of glass out onto the grass, and ran diagonal cracks all the way up to the top corners.

Small pieces sprinkled down onto the terrazzo. She lay face down with her throat across the sill where the plate glass had been puttied in. The top section was suspended. It shimmied. It creaked. Pieces of dry putty fell, then suddenly the great plate of glass worked loose and fell like a great blade, straight down.

She humped her purple hips high and smacked them down. The final grind and bump. The falling glass had made an enormous sound. The brick-red hair did not go well with the spreading puddle of bright red blood.

I hitched myself with frantic effort toward the small table by her chair. I hooked my feet around a table leg and yanked it over. I could hear him coming. The gun spun to a stop five feet away.

More lumpy hitching spasmodic effort, like a legless bug.

"Fredrika! Fredrika!" he called in a voice of anguish and loss. He was behind me. I could not see him. I got my fingers on the gun. I could barely feel it. My hands were numb. I fumbled at it and my right hand would not pick it up.

Something yanked my chair back. He bent and picked up the gun. He was bare to the waist, oiled with sweat, his chest hairless, his breasts fatty as a woman's. His mouth worked and he sobbed and he aimed the snub barrel at the center of my face. He was bending over me. There was a strange sudden sound, a damp, smacky little chunking sound. He straightened up and stood very still as if listening to something a long way off. The Airweight slid out of his hand and clanked on the floor. Then he puddled down slowly, with a tired sigh, and stretched out on his back, his head lolling toward me, eyes half-open, only the whites showing, and with a small, very neat, very very round hole punched through the bone of brow an inch above the left eyebrow, and on the curve of forehead into temple. A single blood-drop ran an inch away from the hole and stopped at the end of its pink snailtrail. Belly gas rumbled and then made a little snore sound as it carne out through the flaccid throat.

I had a view of the lawn beyond the broken glass from a vantage point about as high as a rabbit's eye, and I saw two men come across from the direction of the punk-tree hedge. It was an arty director's angle at combat technique. They came toward the house, running swiftly, widely separated, constantly varying both direction and speed, weapons held in a familiar readiness.

The ultimate and grotesque contrast was in the way they were dressed-neat dark trousers, dress shoes, white shirts, neckties.

"It's okay!" I shouted. "It's safe."

They dived and disappeared. "What is your name?" one of them called. Veddy British.

"McGee. Travis McGee. They're both dead." They appeared suddenly, much closer, standing upright, stepping through the great hole where the glass had been, avoiding the blood.

Trim-bodied men in their early thirties. Tough and watchful faces, an air of special communication between them. As they quickly checked the bodies of the man and the woman, I said, "The girl needs help. She's somewhere in the house."