Kitten with a whip Read online

  'Well, there was quite a crowd over at the fronton."

  "We were there, too, for a while. Too bad I didn't see you. I could have used some pointers on who to bet on.

  Johnny spoke up and a flicker of annoyance passed over Helens face. He said, "Boy, I don't see anything to that jai alai myself. You just get settled down to watch it and, bingo, it's all over. 111 take baseball any time. I got no race prejudice, mind you, it's not that. Those Mexicans or Cubans or Basques or whatever they are can play what they want. It's just that I like a game out in the open, a game where the score makes sense. What's your line of work, Dave?"

  Sid rose suddenly. "I'm making a run for the little boys* room," he announced loudly. "Anybody want to come along and hold my hand? OJcay." He shambled off

  across the dance floor toward the rear of the nightclub.

  The band finished a mambo set and swung into a fox-trot. Helen put her hand over David's. *1 feel an overpowering urge to dance with a handsome man. Excuse us, gang.

  He stayed in his chair. *1 don t think I make the specifications.'*

  "Come on." She was already on her feet, tugging gently at his hand. "Ill compromise. I'm good at that.'*

  He walked with her to the edge of the dance floor, reluctant but resigned. The dance, finish the other drink . . . and he*d be able to slip away, his obUgations to his friends fulfilled. Helen came into his arms and they moved off together in rhythm to the music.

  It took a moment, a few steps, a turn or two, for his resigned feeling to turn into wariness. For Helen was not staying at the respectable distance David had come to expect from other men's wives. Her long slim body was pressed flush against his and he became uncomfortably conscious of the rubbery warmth of her small breasts on his chest and the way their legs meshed intimately when they turned. He was embarrassed and he didn't speak.

  "Good to get alone once in a while, isn't it?" Helen said softly, lou're a good dancer, Dave. I had a hunch you would be."

  "So are you," he repHed, not meaning it.

  She pulled back her head to look at nim, her steady disconcerting gaze from beneath those phony Oriental brows. "Don't get a chance to dance much any more. Sid thinks we look funny together because I'm a touch taller than he is. Oh well, I guess we're all self-conscious about something." She put her cheek against his again and he could feel her breath on his ear. 'Til admit it's nice being with someone I can look up to."

  "Sid's a grand guy."

  "Why, sure. Did I say he wasn't?" She chuckled. "You men. Tne way you think you're the only ones who ever get bored."

  He considered it unsafe to reply. All he wanted was to get away. His memory reminded him of yesterday morning, with Helen and Sid in their patio. Then he

  had allowed himself a moment of vanity, thinking Helen was making a play for him, thinking of himself as an object of desire, a real killer-diUer when it came to women. Only a moment of it, then he had laughed it away. Tonight all that was true—except that Helen was on the make for anyone halfway presentable and there could be no vanity in that. Any clean American male would do. In a flash of insight, he pitied her promiscuity. Her attitude was rooted in mere boredom, not in survival. Home, kids, security—she had everything to lose and nothing to gain but a few furtive moments of excitement. In some ways, she was worse off than Jody.

  He glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder at his wristwatch. She felt his arm move. Matter-of-factly, she inquired, "Afraid she won*t wait for you, Dave?"

  *^Huh? Who you talking about?"

  *The woman. No, dont bother to look surprised. I knew it last night when you acted so strange at your house. You haa her hidden someplace. And when we met you a little while ago with that bottle. Men don*t buy Dottles just for themselves, at least not your kind of man. Is she anyone I*d know?"

  "No, I came down here to watch jai alai, thafs all;

  "111 bet." There was the rasp of irritation in her voice; she sensed her failure and it hurt. "Now I could be real clever and ask you to name off some of the players. But I won't."

  "I can't pronoiuice those Basque names, anyway."

  "Well, I won't tell Virginia, either, so don't worry."

  He avoided just in time falling into the trap of thanking her. "I'm not worried. I just plain don't follow you." They were nearing the table where Johnny and Edna waited. "I'm pretty tired, Helen. I think I'd really better say my goocmights."

  "Okay, Dave." She held onto him a moment longer, her loins sHd insistently across his. "I'm tired, too. So darned tired of everything." She was on the verge of tears.

  He led her to the table and held her chair. "Thanks for the dance."

  "Oh, nothing, really," she said brightly but her smile was sad. "Where*s Sid? He must have fallen in/'

  David said, "I m going to have to make tracks. Tell Sid dianks for the drink." He retrieved his bottle from imder his chair. "Glad to have met you folks."

  They echoed his sentiments—"Take it easy"-—and Helen called after him, "See you next time, Dave."

  No, you wont, he thought. You guessed right about evertfthing but that. If I ever get out of the mess Ym in. Til be on my guard for the rest of my life. So Helens got plenty to lose—well, Fve got so much more. I like Sid and I'm going to miss the Monday evening handball workouts but that's not much to pay to keep away from Helen. She's a sad case but she's dangerous ana the best way to avoid danger is to keep miles away from it. Lead us not into temptation . . . Vve learned that much from lody.

  It was nearly midnight as he left the nightclub. The entranceway was a jagged one, the view from the street blocked by a gaudily painted wooden screen. The blare of trumpets behind him annouced the beginning of the next floor show. He had to back against the screen for a moment to allow a fresh surge of funseekers to enter. Their laughs were shrill, their voices speeded-up, and he could smell the Hquor on their combined breaths as they passed. Then another smell reached his nostrils, the familiar acid reek of some kind of medication.

  The throng went by and he was standing face to face with Pancho.

  "Well, howdy-doodyl" the boy crowed. His left arm was bandaged from elbow to shoulder and rested in a shng. His white-toothed grin was mean. "The big man himseHI"

  Eying him, David let the whisky bottle slide down in his hand so that he was holding it by the neck. The only question in his mind was not what? but where? Should he slug Pancho here or should he lure him to a more secluded spot? "Where*s Buck?"

  "Oh, you don't want to see Buck," Pancho said. "He's working the other side of the street and he's got two hands going for him. Me, I*m a crip for the time being but I stiQ got eyes for doing a good job." "What job?"

  "Hey now, you think we went for that runout you puUed on us? You're going to bleed, man."

  "Okay, Idd," David said quietly. "You can start any time." He watched Pancho ball his right hand into a fist, the heavy ring protruding, ready to scar. He felt silly, taking a defensive posture before a one-handed boy.

  Pancho too appeared to recognize the odds. He kept talking, stalling perhaps in hopes of Buck's arrival. He had been bragging up to this point, almost by formula, but now a deep and real bitterness crept into his tone. "And after we settle you, we're taking out after that bitchy Jode. She's not goiug to blow so big-time after I personally cut her up."

  David relaxed. He wanted to laugh at the boy but didn't. He said gendy, "What do you want to talx like that for, Panchor You got nothing against me, actually, and none of it matters a damn. All the trouble's not worth it for either of us, so let's forget it, huh?"

  "You crap," said Pancho fiercely. "You take me serious or I'll kill you, I swear I will! I'll make you hurtl You and that stuck-up floozy tool She's got no right to treat me like dirt and I'm going to make her ugly before I get through, you watch!"

  A knot of Mexicans began to gather about them, attracted by Pancho's hieh-pitched challenges. David saw a pair of Tijuana policemen wander up, as usual timing their rounds to catch the floor shows at the various cabar
ets and also to survey the places at their most crowded hours. David raised his voice over Pancho's. "Officers—over here, please!"

  They shoved through to his side immediately, dark eyes alert. "Hello, senor. You desire?"

  "This punk kid"—David pointed at the astounded Pancho—nas been annoying me all evening. Keeps trying to seU me something. Marijuana, I think."

  "Hey!" Pancho whinnied in protest. 'What you trying to do? Dave!"

  "Selling the stuff is against your law, isn't it?" David pursued. There popped into his mind the cigarette butt that Pancho had so carefully saved earHer. "I don't know, but if you search him, I wouldn't be surprised if he had some of the stuff on him."

  The pohcemen hesitated, leaning closer to see if the

  American was drunk. Pancho turned suddenly to make a dash into the nightclub and his panic decided them. They seized him by either arm, disregarding the bandages, and the boy screamed in agony. "We will investigate," one of them told David gravely. *lt is against our law too, have no fear of that.

  "You son of a bitching bastardi" Pancho yelled. "Wait till I tell them what a lousy doublecrosser—' But his accusation was lost in a crash of flamenco music from the bandstand and the officers hustled him roughly away down the street.

  David wiped his forehead with his hand and looked at the sweat gleaming on his fingers. Not bad, he decided, reviewing his behavior. Too bad, but not bad. After being pushed around for two days, it felt good to be doing a httle pushing on his own hook. He stepped to the curb and hailed a cab.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As HE RODE BACK to the motcl, sitting tensely forward on the leather seat of the cab, David wondered about himself. He could visuaHze again and again the way he had disposed of Pancho but it was all he could do to see himself in the scene. It was easier to picture some stranger who happened to be wearing his clothes. Never before, that he could remember, had he played such a devious trick. And yet it had come to him so easily and naturally in the moment of need. It was an underhanded maneuver more generic to Tody than to David Patton, and that was what bothered him. Had his association with the girl rubbed oflF on him—or was Jody right after all, and there did exist a subterranean kinship between them? A tag of poetry about vice bubbled to the surface from his high school days. We first endure, then pity, then embrace. In his own case, he had screwed up the order quite a bit. He had started oflF by pitying and ended up by enduring, with a hateful but already dimming memory of a drunken embrace sandwiched in the middle. Yet that kind of embrace of accidental lust, bad as it was, was not nearly so degrading as the idea that he might be gradually embracing Jody's lack of principles. That Kind or thinking meant you had let your feelings dry up. Tody was an extreme case but Helen Wri^t was on the verge of it, and how many others he dicm't know about. When you loved nobody but yourself, you no longer loved at all.

  From a block away he saw his station wagon parked in front of the motel and for the first time realized that Jody might well have stolen it. She had the keys and the opportunity. But before he could think good of her on that score, he remembered that he had the only money between them. She would never proceed without that.

  The taxi made a U-tum and let him out. He paid the driver, who grinned knowiugly at the bottle of whisky, and headed for the Ughts of Cabin Three. The faintly glowing numbers on his watch read a quarter past twelve. It was Monday, a new day, the beginning of a new week. It was a time to begin afresh. And first on the agenda was . . .

  He heard the commotion clamor into being while he was still a dozen yards from the cabin. It did sudden violence to the quiet night, the screech of voices rising in anger, followed by the thud of something to the floor. The dozen scrambled thoughts in David's mind shaped into one—what had Jody done now, attacked the landlady? He ran for the door, flung it open.

  Jody cowered where she had been thrown on the floor beside the bed. She held one frantic hand up before her face, shielding it. Her other hand was pinned down by Buck's heel, and his free foot was drawn back to kick her in the breast or throat or head. His blond waves of hair gleamed under the electric bulb and every muscle of his splendidly developed body was tautened for that one incredible purpose. He looked as magnificent as an avenging angel save for what he was about to do and the contorted stupidity of his face.

  *lm going to mess you up good!" he was yelling down at her as David burst in. '*Guysll throw up to look at you when I get donel"

  "Buck, no! Lover . . ." For the first time, David saw Jody terrified. As if in anticipation, her face had already stretched to ugly proportions, her eyes immense and showing too much white, her pleading mouth drawn against her teeth and slobbering with fear.

  "Yeah," breathed Buck appreciatively. "See how much whoring around you can do as a cripplel Fm going to make you into a lousy old lady, starting now!"

  "Davidl" Her wildly roaming eyes finally saw him in the doorway.

  Buck wheeled quickly to face him and his lips blossomed into a malevolent grin. "Sure, there you are. You had to be around somewhere, soon as I saw the car."

  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.