Kitten with a whip Read online

  "Hear tfie man, Buck? You stick me, I'm going to stick you—with a doctor's bill."

  Buck grinned. "Up your bucket. Ill kiss it and make it well."

  "And give me what you've got? Oh, hell no."

  David ran out of bandage. "That's it." Buck draped his arm companionably across Pancho's shoulders and they sauntered out toward the hving room. David opened the bathroom window and drew a deep breath of the warm night air. The sight of blood didn't bother him but, working so close to Pancho, the smell of the medication on the back of the boy's neck was beginning to nauseate him. With a sigh he turned back to the sink to clean it. As he scoured, he brooded over his lack

  of comprehension of these people. He, the bystander, was far more disturbed by me assault than they were.

  They must have gotten conditioned to violence somehow, he decided. To them it came cheap. Look at their easy use of 'IdUer" as an endearment. I grew up when money was expensive and so was life and everything was on a pretty even keel, he thought. You knew tomorrow wouldnt he too much different from today and you were pretty far grown up, with all your standards and values established, before tomorrow came and killed some thirty million people in the war and then another million in that Korean nonsense. And you still cant be sure it's over.

  That's what these kids were bom to—cheap Hfe, cheap money, cheap everything. People can't imderstand anything any more unless they can count in the biUions and even one lousy biUion is incomprehensible. Looking at it that way, no wonder there's nothing stable about them. Everything's tentative, built to last a minute and no more. Tlieir friendships, their enmities, all based on the here and now because one minute later somebody may look into a microscope or press a button and nothing anyone knows will be true any more. One minutes all you've got, kids; tomorrow is as mysterious as a billion. So Pancho got his arm sliced open. It could have been his jugular or his heart, hut don't worry about it. Worry is only for the higher animals, the elder ones who organized this mess . . .

  At that point, he pulled his thinking up short. He didn't like the tack it was taking. Damned if he was going to absolve Tody and her tribe of all blame, much less begin to shoulder it himself. They were the freaks, not he, and for every Buck and Jody there must be a thousand decent responsible Idds wno could face up to hard luck and a queasy overpriced world and come through all right. Sid Wright's boys were a good example. So his own misfortune wasn't that he had become involved with the younger generation but that he had become involved with these particular twisted ambassadors of it. And that nothing in his backgroimd had prepared him to deal with them.

  With the bathroom clean and orderly again, he wrung

  out a bath towel under the faucet and returned to Katie's room. He righted her Httle blackboard desk that had gotten knocked over in the scuffle and picked up the pieces of chalk that had fallen out of it. Then he got down on his knees to scrub away the blood that still glistened on the carpet. The drops stood out prominently on the dark tweedy weave that he and Vir-ginifl had finally decided on because it wouldn't show uie dirt. David sighed and began to blot and rub with the clammy towel. He hoped that cold water would do the trick but he wouldn't be able to tell for sure until it had dried. On his hands and knees, he pursued the trail along the hall to the bathroom, sponging as he went, swearing imder his breath. When the trail came to an end, he rinsed the bloodstains out of the towel and spread it to dry along the edge of the tub.

  Buck and Pancho and Jody were deep in a serious discussion when David returned to the Uving room. They broke off at his entrance, all three glancing at him in such a way as to make him certain that he had been the subject matter of their conversation.

  Davia looked around. "Where are the other girls?'*

  "They took off," Jody said indifferently. "Guess they thought the session was getting a Httle rough."

  '*Yeah," Pancho said disgustedly to Buck. 'That's another bit I owe you, big man. Nina was just starting to moan it up when you busted in with the sharp stuff."

  "We still got Jody."

  She snorted. Anxiously, David peeked out through the Venetian blind. The low-slung hotrod was gone, too, and his hopes shriveled. He hadn't reahzed till now how tenaciously he had been clinging to the vague but possible scheme that somehow Jody could be persuaded to leave with her friends, or even that her friends could be bribed into abducting her. But now their transportation had run away and he was saddled with not one helHon but three of them.

  "You should've at least have got the keys," Pancho was complaining.

  "For Midge's bucket? You must be off to the moon or somethingi She won't turn loose of the keys for no-

  body. I mean, she knows it's the bucket that keeps her in circulation, not her fat tail."

  "Maybe you shouldVe used the knife on her instead. She's got skin to spore."

  "Next time."

  "Why didn't you have sense enough to beat it with the other girlsr David asked Jody. "It was a perfect opportunity."

  *I couldn't run out on you, David, leave you with a mess on your hands. I'm not like that. Besides, this way's better."

  "Better for who?"

  There was a quick silence as if he had supplied a cue. They looked at each other, waiting for one to turn spokesman. Jody stepped into the breach. "David killer, we've been racking over what we should do next." She paused with a tender smile, inviting him to ask what. When he didn't, she continued. "Well, this is your own idea, David, and I think you're absolutely right. Remember, you said Pancho has to see a doctor?*

  "Just a minute," David interrupted. He regarded Pancho, who grinned apprehensively. "I thought you were afraid to."

  "Well, yeah, I am," Pancho. "I go to a doc with a cut like this and no matter how I say I got it, they're going to check with the cops. And anything that's happened anywhere in town tonight, 111 get hauled in for. Maybe you never been rousted, huh?"

  "Maybe you'd rather lose your arm."

  "Let me finish," said Tody. "It so happens that Buck knows a doc that'll paten up Pancho's arm without asking any dumb questions. All you have to do is just run us down to Tijuana—"

  David was shaking his head before Jody had finished speaking. Buck growled, "We might just up and take your car, you know."

  "I don't think so," David told him steadily. "We'd tangle and this time you don't have the knife."

  "Oh, Buck, shut up," Jody commanded. "That's all you know, going ape and throwing your weight around. Give David a chance to think it over and he'll see what's the bright thing to do. After aU, if he doesn't

  drive us down to T-town, well just have to hole up here and take our chances." She smiled winningly at her host

  DeUberately, he scowled back at her. Inside he was quaking with the thrill of being on the verge. She was Daiting him, of course, holding out the possibility of getting rid of her in exchange for taking them all to Tijuana. '"Well ..." He mustn't appear too anxious. He mustn't let her guess that he had hatched this identical scheme this afternoon, had it ready to go in the back of his mind. He looked from one to the other of them in pretended desperation. Finally, he threw up his hands in a gesture of disgust. "Well, I guess I'm stuck. Okay, 111 drive you down there."

  The trio grinned trimnphantly among themselves and Jody said, "Just hke that!'*

  "First, though, we're going to pick up aroimd the house ..." He set Tody to cleaning oflF the coflFee table and sent Buck to the trash barrel in the garage with the bottles of her hair preparations. She washed and dried the highball glasses by hand and put them away. It amounted only to some ten minutes work, nothing he couldn't have quickly done himself when he returned home, but it gave him a punitive Httle glow of satisfaction to see them doing something constructive at his command. As overseer, his only contribution was to wrap and safety-pin a dish towel around Pancho's moist rea bandages so the car upholstery wouldn't get stained. Then, with the house set to ri^ts, he put on his coat, turned out the Hghts and locked all the doors. He doubted that he would ever leave a door
unlocked again.

  Both the boys were fascinated by the electronic mechanism that lifted open the garage door from inside the station wagon. "Hey, that's shiny 1" Buck exclaimed. "I'm going to have me one of those someday."

  "Sure," said Jody. "Except it'll be operated by the guard."

  Pancho muttered from the back seat he shared with Buck, "She gets cuter and cuter and cuter, doesn't she? A real snotty-type big shot."

  "No squabbling!" David snapped. 'Xet's keep our

  minds on business." He took a back road, dark and little traveled, that wound past the reservoir and eventually hooked up with the coastal freeway a short distance above the border. He enjoyed speeding tonight, exhilarating in the blast of air that swept in through the windows as if it w^re the wiud that would clean these people out of his life. It was good to be on the go again, driving toward a definite destination and freedom.

  Pancho's arm was beginning to pain him now and he whined and complained about it babyishly untH Buck told him to shut up. Jody fiddled with the car radio, searching the dial from one end to the other for a news broadcast. The most she could find was a five-minute summary that didn't mention her. She grunted with disappointment.

  "Maybe that's good, though," she conceded. "Maybe they've stopped looking so hard. Let's try the big gates."

  "Isn*t there some kind of curfew for you kids?" David asked.

  She giggled. *Tlien you be oiur daddy."

  They rolled down the hill into San Ysidro, the border port of entry on the U. S. side, a Httle hamlet as much Mexican as American, save for the garish motels that catered to the tourists who preferred to sleep on their native soil. Due south could be seen the broad curtain of Hghts on the slopes of residential Tijuana. It was difficult to realize that this sparkling but prosaic view represented a foreign land.

  David didn't Know whether to anticipate trouble at the international Hne or not. Plenty of times the Mexican border guards didn't even stir off their stools to wave the cars through, in contrast to the return trip when U. S. Customs men and Immigration men carefully scrutinized every passenger and automobile for ahens and contraband.

  He was just as glad that Jody was in a cautious mood. A couple hundred yards short of the border, she had him turn into a dark shut-down parking lot. He waited, engine idling, while Buck limped on ahead to reconnoiter the broad nine-lane portal that arched over the highway. Buck returned shortly, looking mean.

  "Damn them all/* he said. "They got some of our cops watching, sheriffs men. They're looking at everybody."

  "Let's leave her here," Pancho whimpered. "Don t you see how I'm suffering? This arm's about to kill mef"

  "Nobody's leaving me nowhere," said Jody flatly.

  David said in a quiet voice, "Haven't I read in the papers about places along the border where you can sneak across on foot?"

  "You shut up, tool All you got eyes for is the skip bit, I can see through you. Let me thinki" A second later she turned to Buck. "How about the river bed?"

  He shrugged, busy combing his hair. "Last time I was by theyd put up some wire."

  "Could we bust through?"

  "This bucket got any soup?"

  "Okay." She squirmed around to instruct David. Turn left at the next street for about half a mile. There's some vacant lots we can cut across."

  He obeyed, thankful that there was no moon. When the paving ended and the road became rutted dirt, he shut off his headhghts. Then the trail petered out altogether among squatting shadows of scrubby sagebrush and mesquite. David drove on, not thoroughly convinced that he wasn't struggling through a dream. The car rocked this way and that, and the weird silhouettes that surrounded them looked ready to leap at them as he bumped over potholes that he couldn't detect in the dark. Then a tall thin shape appeared directly in front of him and he braked jarringly to a sudden stop.

  "It's just the lousy fence!" Buck hissed.

  "Okay. What next?" David could see now that it was scarcely a formidable barrier, five strands of barbed wire.

  "Aim at the post. Don't hit the wire in the middle or it acts like a spring."

  "Hold it, David." Jody put her hand on his knee. "Roll up your window. Maybe Buck don't care if the wire snaps back and takes off your head, but I do."

  "Thanks." He rolled up his window, squinted into the murk ahead and stepped on the accelerator. The station wagon charged forward and there was a jar, not too hard, as his bumper struck the fence post squarely.

  The post splintered and gave way, raking the underside of the car as the wires snapped like whips. He caught a glimpse of a loose end lashing against his window and then it was all behind them and uiey were in Mexico. As simple as that.

  The mesa came to an end, falling ofiF in a gradual slope leading down to the river bed. The broad sandy channel remained dry at nearly every season of the year now that Rodriguez Dam penned up the water ten miles to the east. Freed of the threat of floods, the river bottom had spawned dozens of ramshackle dwellings built from tarpaper and flattened gasoline tins, and there was even a fenced-in softball field, tonight unlighted, where the river once had flowed.

  They came upon paved road again and David switched on the headH^ts, reheved to be done with slinking about Hke a smuggler. Yet, the idea bore down on him with full force for the first time, that's exactly what he was—a smuggler. He had just succeeded in smuggling a fugitive out of the United States of America. In a way, though he didn't like to find himself looking at it from this angle, it was an achievement to be rather proud of.

  They drove up onto the bridge that crossed over the river bed toward the main extent of the border city. With Buck giving the directions, David detoured along side streets to avoid the neon brilliance of Avenida Re-volucion, the crowded midway of Tijuana's tourist trade.

  "Turn here," said Buck. "Half a block down, see where that rooster's running across? Right there's an alley. Pull in and cut your Hghts."

  Where they stopped was a squalid area of unpainted garages and sagging fences, a poverty-ridden neighborhood reeking with me rancid sweetness of garbage and no plumbing. For once, David felt grateful that Jody had doused herself so liberally with the cologne. And, for his part, he wouldn't have cared to have even a splinter removed by a doctor who practiced in these surroundings. But he tried not to mink of it as any of his business, and he supposed that in Pancho's case any doctor was better than none.

  Buck left them, vanishing down a narrow corridor between two yards. To all of them it seemed they waited

  a long time, Pancho cursing softly with self-pity and wondering aloud what could have gone wrong, in one of the houses a radio was playing a rhumba tune, the only real indication that the neighborhood was inhabited by human life.

  Buck materialized out of the corridor at last. "Okay," he said. "Hell go for it. He wants ten bucks."

  *Tm down to the cotton," Pancho objected. "What would I be doing with ten bucks?"

  'Hell, don*t look at me," Buck said. Try the Boy Scout here." David reached for his wallet but Jody flared up immediately. "None of that stuflE," she said. "That money's mine. David's already given it to me."

  That touched off a vitriohc quarrel oetween Jody and Pancho, with him whining that she wanted to see him bleed to death and her retorting that he could rot away on the spot for all she cared. David listened to them trade insults and obscenities in their pecuhar jargon and he could only understand about half of them. Like David, Buck stayed out of it, a second middleman until he finally intervened with, "The guy*s waiting in there and might go back to bed. Come on, Jody. We drove down all this way."

  She relented grudgingly. "Give him five," she told David. "Even that's overboard for what he*s got to do. They can promise the rest for later."

  Although accompHshed, the compromise pleased no one—including, David reflected, the quack waiting inside when he heard about it. Probably, though, in this sort of clandestine enterprise he didn't expect to get all he asked, anyway. He gave Pancho a five-dollar bill and watched the boy
s shp away between the fences, Buck leading.

  Jody was still brooding about the money. "Always been this way, right from the first. Soon as I get something of my own, somebody like them is there to lap it up."

  "Easy come, easy go," David murmured sarcastically.

  "Now don*t start picking at me again." She leaned out the window, peering into the dark where the pair had disappeared. Then she sat back in the seat and looked quizzically at David. "Well? You waiting for a beU to ring?"

  He didn't understand.

  "Let's get on our horse," she urged impatiently. *^ou think I got eyes for waiting around on them?"

  David smiled as he started the engine.

  '1 know what you're thinking about me," Jody accused him. "The dirty rat bit. Well, I figure I can always make more friends. I make friends real easy."

  "I wasn't thinking that at all, Jody." He backed the car out and drove off with her. The only thing he had in mind was a bit of simple arithmetic. Three minus two left one. Two down and one to go. The one to go was undoubtedly the most dangerous factor of the lot but he felt as if he was getting somewhere at last.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They rode around for a while, aimlessly jogging through dingy back streets where heat sat like piled black velvet. David had no definite plan; nor, apparently, did Jody. They didn't speak, conscious that their thoughts couldn't be shared. As they neared the southern end of town, David veered over onto the maia avenue, a paved boulevard that wouldn't punish the tires so much. They were past the glare and frenzy of the toiuist district and the few people on the streets were Mexicans.

  He thought he knew exactly what Jody was thinking. She would be projecting her next move and seeing how she could use him to accomplish it. For himself he was waiting for her to announce her strategy. He felt sure any ideas that came from him would be inspected too thoroughly for a possible trap. Better let her come to a decision, then he could go ^ong with it, his eyes open for the first chance to make his escape.