Devil to Pay, page 11
part #25 of Cherry Delight Series
I reached out blindly and found his body, running my palms over it, feeling the hard musculature, the smoothness of his skin. Eventually I came to his brichouard, “the bludgeon,” as some French people name it. My fingertips caressed it until I felt him tremble.
“Care for a little variety, honey?” I crooned.
He paused to stare at me. Maybe he saw the impish laughter in my eyes, or the need to pleasure him, because he nodded. “Whatever you say, Cherry.”
“On your back, then.”
He couldn’t get on his back fast enough, and when he was lying there, I swung a leg over his head. This afforded him a great view of my genitals and my buttocks, and he cried out in delight at the sight. Me, I settled down on him so that my breasts lay upon his belly while I extended my hands to grasp his priapus.
This position, which the French know as soixante-neuf or as tete-beche also, is known as a sixty-nine in America, is known as ai-name by the Japanese, and was known as the dulce opus back in the time of the old Romans. Just goes to show you that men are men and women are women, no matter where or when.
Raoul outdid himself. He was all man. His tongue and lips drove me batty while I made sure that he was having a good time, believe you me. Eventually, of course, we both exploded, and just lay there trying to pretend we were still alive.
We fell asleep like that.
Sometime during the night, Raoul must have gotten up and coaxed me into sliding between the sheets, but I had no memory of it. I just lay there and slept like a dead person, and not until I smelled coffee sometime around noon did I finally open my eyes.
The first thing that popped into my mind was Guy Pascal. I lay there and thought about him, and then panic hit me.
“Oh, my God,” I moaned, throwing back the bed-covers and leaping out onto the carpet.
Guy Pascal had tricked the devil-worshipers into letting me attend the Black Mass. I had shot my Gold Cup and rescued Blanche Soustelle. All of which was fine, but that left Guy Pascal alone and unprotected.
Suppose, just suppose, those people who were at that Black Mass knew about Guy and me. They might not make a try for me, they’d already tried that and failed a number of times. But they might take it into their heads to tackle Guy.
Oh, sure, I had warned him.
But he was no Cherry Delight when it came to shooting guns and using judo or Jiu-jitsu He was vulnerable. I got a guilty conscience as I showered and dressed. Here I had enjoyed myself no end last night, and I’d left Guy Pascal to be a victim to those Satanists.
I ran downstairs. Raoul was in the kitchen, doing yeoman work with a skillet, some eggs and ham, and a pot of bubbling coffee. He greeted me with a big grin but the grin faded when he saw my face.
“Now what?” he wanted to know.
I told him as he put a plate of those eggs and ham slices, with toast, before me. I ate like a starving person, even while I talked, even with my mouth full.
The upshot of my talking was that, as soon as I’d had my coffee, I snatched up my Gucci bag and ran for the Mercedes-Benz. Raoul tried to talk me out of it, telling me that Guy Pascal could take care of himself, but I knew better.
Guy was no fighter. He might talk big to impress me, and assure me that he could take care of himself, but I knew better. He would be alone there in his chateau except for his two servants—and they were both pretty old, almost doddering—and he was easy prey for any hulking brutes who might appear to beat him to death.
I drove like a crazy woman.
The chateau was silent as I entered the courtyard. There was no sign of life anywhere around. Maybe this should have warned me, but it didn’t. I was too intent on rescuing Guy Pascal if he should be in trouble.
I went up the stone steps two at a time. I yelled, too, but all I heard in answer was the echo of my own voice.
I drew out the Gold Cup Colt and held it ready to use.
On feet that made no sound, I crept into the chateau and along the hall. There was that silence, like a dead weight over everything. Nothing stirred, no sound except my own breathing disturbed that silence.
I beat feet toward the room he had made into a den.
Its door was closed, but I put a hand on the knob and opened it. I stood stock-still.
Guy Pascal was lying on the floor, motionless. I saw no blood, but he seemed absolutely lifeless. I put the Colt back inside the Gucci bag as I ran forward to kneel beside him. ;
“Guy,” I whispered.
He opened his eyes. They looked sick to me. I glanced away from his face and now I saw for the first time that he was tied up. Ropes held his ankles and his wrists.
“I’ll have you free in a jiffy,” I said.
That was when the room fell in on me.
Well, it really wasn’t the room, it only felt like it. But something landed on my back and drove me flat.
Something else grabbed one of my legs and twisted it.
At the same time a hand was at the back of my head, banging my forehead into the stone floor of the room.
I saw stars. I also got mad.
Whoever had hold of me wasn’t any judo expert, because I twisted around and got my right hand free and fashioning a cone with my fingers, drove my fingertips up into the throat of the man that held me.
He choked, tried to scream, and fell away.
That gave me the chance to move. Even as I did, another of those big farm boys swung a fist. I ducked and the fist hit my shoulder instead of my head. That blow would have knocked me out if it had landed on my jaw. As it was, it drove me sideways, sprawling.
Two other big boys leaped for me. I twisted aside, got a foot up and kicked one of them in the balls. The other guy I raked with my long fingernails, right across his face, trying for his eyes.
I missed his eyes but I scored plenty, because there was skin under my fingernails and bloody streaks on his cheeks. He let out a how! of fury.
If I could have reached my Gold Cup, there would have been a slaughter right then and there. But my Gucci bag had fallen when I went sprawling and I just couldn’t get to it, not before two more guys jumped me.
It was close work. I couldn’t use my judo tricks, not very well. Besides, they were pounding me with their big fists, and those boys were strong. Were they ever! All that manual labor they did on the farms was bunched up in their muscles. They punched me as though I were a punching bag, and believe me, I felt like one.
After a time I lost interest in what was going on.
I passed out, in other words.
When I came to, there were ropes around my wrists, which were tied in back of me. We were still in the den, Guy Pascal was tied up on the floor, and those big bruisers—there were eight of them, I counted—were standing around and looking down at me.
A couple of those guys were in pain, I could see it on their faces. But they were watching me, just the same. One of them, the guy whose face I had marked with my fingernails, was patting the bloody furrows with a handkerchief.
He said: “You’ve caused us a lot of trouble.”
“I’ll cause a lot more when I get free.”
He shook his head. “You won’t get free. Not ever. You’re going to die.”
“Am I, now?”
I really didn’t feel as brave as I sounded, answering him like that. But I’d be damned if I’d show him I was scared. I stared at him, eyeball to eyeball, and I let him see that I had guts.
He chuckled. “It will appear like an accident, you know. If the flics come searching for you, nobody knows what happened. Why should we? We are all simple, honest farmers, who have no interest in visitors or vacationers.”
He shrugged.
Somebody behind him muttered: “Let me at her for a time, Jacques. I want to hurt her the way she’s hurt me.”
Jacques thought about that, head cocked sideways.
Then he shook his head—regretfully, it seemed to me.
“No. It is enough if she dies. If she is found marked by blows, other than the ones she suffered in the fight, it will not look good.”
I admired his thinking, even while I was being grateful for his decision. It was bad enough to die without dying in pain, or suffering much pain before death came to end it. I lay there and ran my stare around those faces, memorizing them. I would know all these boys again—if I lived long enough to see them.
The guy with the scars on his face walked toward the window. He stood there for a little time, then said: “We must take her after it is dark. We will wait.”
We waited all that long day. I was damn glad I had eaten those eggs and the ham, earlier. By “the time it was nightfall, my stomach was telling me I should have eaten twice as much. Those big bruisers didn’t lack for food. They had sandwiches hidden somewhere, and hot coffee.
They sat there eating and drinking and grinning at me between mouthfuls. I guess they knew how hungry I was getting.
Guy Pascal tried to get them to feed us, for which I admired him, but they ignored him. Nor did they feed him, either.
As the shadows lengthened into night, one of the bruisers lifted me to my feet. I swayed a moment, giddily, but I wasn’t given time to balance myself. A hand shoved me toward the door. I went at a stumbling trot, off-balance, keeping upright by dumb luck.
In the hall, another of the bruisers was there to shove me along the hallway toward the front door. I went where he pushed me. Hell, I couldn’t help myself.
We went out into the early night. They brought me to the Mercedes-Benz and shoved me into the back seat between two of the bigger guys. One of the men slid behind the wheel and started the motor.
We drove through the Brittany countryside. We didn’t hurry. We might have been on a sightseeing tour.
Nobody said a word, and I knew damn well they weren’t going to answer any questions I might have to ask.
We drove and drove until it was around ten o’clock. Then the driver put on speed, as though he had decided to stop fooling around and get this business over and done with. I recognized a landmark or two and got the impression we were headed for that pool near which Guy Pascal had put the million francs.
The drowning pool, Raoul had told me they called it. L’etang noyer. There had been a story about it once, he had said. It seemed that long ago, in the days of Gilles de Rais, many of the girls who lived here in Brittany had flung themselves into that pool rather than be taken by the man whom legend calls Bluebeard. Ever since, it has been a place to be avoided.
I sure would have liked to avoid it, but I wasn’t going to be given a chance. The Mercedes-Benz pulled up close to the pool. The men got out and dragged me with them. One of the men went looking for a big rock, while another uncoiled a length of rope from his middle.
They bound that big rock in a rope cradle made from that rope, and what was leftover of the rope went around me, tying me to the rock. Then those men lifted me in their arms and swung me back and forth.
They chanted as they swung me, and then they let me go. My body curved up and away, arching through the air. I didn’t scream. I would need all my breath once I hit the water.
I hit, all right, and I went down. Deep down, until I could see blackness around me when I opened my eyes.
It was cold and wet, and I told myself this was a hell of a way to die.
I don’t know to this day how deep that pool is, but when I got to a certain depth and my body started to rise up, something wouldn’t let it. I was caught fast— probably by some dead branch from a sunken tree— and no matter how I squirmed and wriggled, I wasn’t going to get free.
I said goodbye to the world around me.
In moments, I would be dead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I did not panic. I learned a long time ago that panic steals your wits, weakens your nerve, and leaves you absolutely helpless. I knew I was going to die down here in these murky depths, but death wasn’t going to find me an easy victim.
So I felt along the ropes that held me, until I came to the branch in which I was snagged. And I found the big rock that weighted me down caught there on that branch. It seemed to me that the knots around that rock had loosened somehow—a trick of the branch itself, the way it had snagged the rope, or the effect of the water on the rope, I didn’t know—and I set to work to loosen them even more.
It was damn hard work. My lungs were about bursting, in a few seconds I would have to open my mouth as though to gulp in air, and once I did that, it was all over.
Frantically, I tugged and yanked. I felt something give, I put more effort and muscle into my job. My fingers caught a piece of that rope, tracked it to a knot. Blindly, my fingers worked on that knot.
It was like iron. Nothing gave.
My head was reeling by this time. I was going to die.
I knew it. But not easily, buster. Not easily!
I gave a desperate yank.
To this day I am not certain what happened. But that thick rope gave, and my body lifted slightly. I yanked again, with my last bit of strength, and then I shot upward.
I was in the middle of a patch of long weeds when this happened, with a number of other water plants that seemed to tug at my clothes and hamper me in every way possible. But I finally got to the top of that pond and stuck my nose and mouth out to gulp in air.
Never have I tasted anything sweeter than that air. I didn’t give a hoot in hell whether or not those guys were there to watch. I didn’t care if they shot at me. All I wanted was air.
When I had had enough, and no shots were heard, I opened my eyes. I was in the middle of a patch of big cattails, the slender leaves of which formed a green canopy around my head. There was some water plantain, too, and some arrow arum. In other words, I was pretty well hidden.
I trod water—it was deep where I was—but I did it carefully, to be sure I made no sound. The men who had dumped me here were still on the verge of the pond, standing around to make sure I didn’t come up.
We all waited together, for what seemed to me to be a long time. Then somebody stirred, and a voice said something about its getting late.
“She’s dead. Nobody could stay underwater that long and live.”
“Might as well go back and make our report.”
They went away then, walking swiftly. I could just make out the bulk of the Mercedes-Benz where they had left it. I was a little surprised at first that they didn’t drive it away, but then it occurred to me that they had to leave it here, to indicate where to search for 134 my body. It would look funny if the car were anywhere else. It would prove that I hadn’t come here to this pond under my own power, maybe, and questions might be asked.
They wanted it to look like suicide, I supposed.
I waited till I was certain those men were a good distance away before I started swimming. I had spent the time in those cattails wriggling and squirming until I was free of the ropes that gripped me. It wasn’t too difficult, I found that the immersion in water had softened them somewhat, it was a matter of pulling and tugging for a while, and when one part of those ropes gave, the rest seemed to fall away.
I crawled out onto dry land and flopped. I lay breathing steadily, waiting for my strength to come back. I was cold, I shook and shivered. All I could think about was a nice, hot bath.
Eventually I rose to my feet and staggered to the car.
As soon as I opened the door, I saw my Gucci bag on the front seat. I grabbed it, checked for my Gold Cup Colt automatic. It was there, fully loaded; naturally, those guys who threw me in the drowning pool had figured I’d never have any further need of it.
Somewhat encouraged, I slid my butt onto the seat, started the engine, and drove off. I drove slowly because I was shaking, my teeth were chattering, and I was sopping wet. It was an effort to keep my eyes on the road and the Mercedes-Benz under control.
But I made it. I pulled into the little driveway of Raoul Luchine’s place, grabbed up the Gucci bag, and ran for the front door. Raoul came to meet me, his eyes enormous.
“What happened?” he yelled, seeing me drip water all over the floor.
“Tell you later. I need a hot tub.”
I started stripping on the way upstairs. I threw my clothes from me as I went up and Raoul, like a good boy, picked them up and carried them into the room. By this time I was just about stark naked.
I ran for the little bathroom, started the hot water, then peeled off my stockings and garter-belt. I threw them out to Raoul.
Then I got into the tub.
Ah, the water felt good! I let its warmth seep into my every pore, and lay back, closing my eyes. I just wanted to stay there forever.
The door opened and closed as Raoul came in. His eyes went all over what he could see of me, which wasn’t very much, because I was well down in that water. He leaned against the door.
“Care to tell me what happened?” he wondered.
“Not now. Not yet. Go get me some warm pajamas.”
He did as I asked, came back with them. By this time I was more or less human, and flashed him a brief smile.
“I damn near drowned, as you might guess,” I began.
I told him the whole story. He listened quietly, making little mutters of indignation and anger, every so often. I could read the sympathy and admiration in his eyes, and that made me feel a little bit better.
“And what of Guy Pascal?” he asked.
I blinked at him. I had forgotten all about Guy Pascal in my own danger. I sat up straighter in the tub, which brought my wet breasts into sight. Raoul stared at them, licked his lips.
“You don’t suppose they’ve hurt him, do you? I mean, maybe they killed him, too.”
Raoul said: “If they did, he’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I groaned. I had to go and make sure. Not that I wanted to. All I wanted to do was crawl into that bed and sleep. But duty comes first, which is why D.U.E. pays me the salary it does.
“Clean clothes,” I muttered.
