Cinderella Sims, page 13
I wiggled my toes, snapped my fingers, felt silly doing it but couldn’t sit still otherwise. Cindy gave the cabby the hotel’s address and we went back there and sacked out.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Right?”
“Right. In the morning. A quick breakfast and we move. We can’t waste time.”
“Suppose Reed is back already?”
I shook my head. “He won’t be,” I said. “Not a chance in the world. He’ll be looking around for us, putting out feelers. He may have called, though.”
“Then Casper will be waiting for us.”
I shook my head. “Like hell he will. Nobody will figure us for a move like this. Casper’ll be sitting on his behind waiting for something to happen. Alone or with Craig—either way he won’t be a problem.”
“He knows me.”
“He doesn’t know me.”
“Craig does.”
I thought that one over, then shrugged. “That’s a chance,” I said. “One we can afford to take. I’m gambling that they won’t be ready for anything. If they are, it’s going to be harder.”
That was an understatement. We had one gun, the one I had taken away from Baron. They would have an arsenal. If all four of them were at the place we could throw in the sponge. But that wasn’t the way I figured it. Reed and Baron would show the next evening or the morning after, maybe later.
Maybe.
There were too many things to figure. Maybe nobody bothered to write down the method of bleaching ones and turning them into twenties. Maybe there was no ink around, maybe we wouldn’t be able to find the plates, a lot of maybes. I didn’t want to think about them.
I couldn’t afford to think about them.
I put them out of my mind.
There was still Cindy, nervous in spite of herself, nervous if not exactly scared. There was still me, alive with nervous energy, all that energy that had to be dissipated one way or another.
There was still the bed.
It was different that night. It was a frenetic passion, a passion used to chase away fear, passion born of tension and worry and gentle fear. It blazed and it sizzled and it burned like fire.
It was good because it had to be good, because we needed it so desperately, because it was, for the moment, the only thing in the world we could have.
And for another reason.
Because there might be no more chances. Because we might both be dead before we were together in bed again, because the next bed we shared might be a grave or a river bottom or a cold stone slab.
We were naked together, naked in the bed, and when I felt the sweet warm softness of her beside me my mind went blank and my brain started to swim. She made a little moaning sound deep in her throat; then she was in my arms. Her lips opened under mine and I tasted her mouth in a deep, long kiss.
Then our bodies were pressed taut together, straining, and I felt her firm breasts press hard against my chest. She writhed in my arms, and when I kissed her I tasted the salty tang of silent tears.
It all made sense to me now. We’d gone out on a limb, far out on a limb, and now we were going to saw the limb off and leave ourselves hanging in the middle of the air. We weren’t going to work deals now, and we weren’t going to keep on running, and we weren’t going to roll over and play dead like nice little doggies doing nice little tricks. We were taking the bull by the horns and the bit in our teeth, and we stood a damned good chance of winding up holding the tiger by the tail.
“Ted—”
She drew away from me and my hands found her breasts. I looked at her face. Her eyes were shining, glowing with a mixture of love and passion, and her mouth was curled in a sexy smile.
I reached out a finger and touched her lips. She kissed the finger. Then I ran that finger down over her chin and throat, down to her breast. I traced ever-diminishing concentric circles around her breast, with the circles getting smaller and smaller until I was touching her nipple and driving her wild.
The change in her was dramatic. Now she was a creature on fire, basic woman incarnate, a thrashing melody of hips and thighs and rampant breasts.
“Ted—”
We were on our way to the gang’s hideout, on our way to outfox the foxes. We were kiddies playing cops and robbers, with a big payoff for the winners and a shallow grave for the losers.
But now this didn’t matter. Not now.
Not for the time being.
Because now she was in my arms, soft and warm and willing, and now she was the only thing in the world that mattered. I was kissing her breasts now. She was churning spasmodically and the earth was in the grip of a cyclone that could pick us up and whirl us away to the land of Oz.
My lips bathed the silken skin. Then I moved lower, coaxing her into delicious peals of torment, kissing the smooth sleek satiny flatness of her body. She wound her fingers in my hair and I thought for a moment she was going to snatch me bald-headed.
I wouldn’t have noticed if she had. I was too busy.
We were going to be criminals, but crime and punishment were a million miles away by now. We were going to be thieves in the night, but now we were naked in the night and the night was a handful of stars in the palm of an angry goddess.
“Ted, I love you! Don’t stop, Ted. Don’t ever stop. Do it forever!”
She didn’t have to say a word. I was not going to stop, not now and not ever. I was giving her the ultimate kiss, the kiss that would seal all bargains until the end of time. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing at all.
And then I was giving her that kiss.
Her whole body was twitching and shaking and heaving, and the heat she was generating would have melted the polar ice cap and vaporized the ensuing water. The passion was a contagious sort of thing and the room was the scene of an epidemic in no time at all.
I needed her, had to have her, and now the kiss was not enough, just as nothing could be enough. It was time. And then it began.
I’ve already said it was good, and that’s about all I can say. It was the beginning and the end of the world. It was a pair of bodies drawn to one another like magnets, clutching and clinging, working rapidly and relentlessly, making moves and seeing stars and breaking records.
“Ted, I love it. Ted, I love it I love you I love everything!”
I loved everything, too.
And it got better and better and better, and it got faster and faster and faster, until it had to stop or it would almost certainly have killed us both.
Then the explosion came. The earth began to tremble and shake, and guns went off and rockets shot up and satellites went into orbit.
And so did we.
Then, after a fashion there was calmness. Then I was holding her in my arms saying meaningless things to her. And then I knew that we were going to go through with it, going to go through with everything, going to take on Reed and Baron and the rest of the mob and come out smelling like a rose.
Nothing could go wrong for us.
Not now.
Not after that.
We lay together, and we touched each other, and we spoke very few words because no words were needed. Finally we drifted into a lazy, desperate sleep.
Morning came too quickly. There should have been a slow period of awakening, a gentle touching of bodies drugged by sleep, of lovemaking that was all sweetness and animalism and warmth and love.
That’s not how it was. It was morning, and sunlight flooded the room, and we made the transference from sleep to consciousness in the shadow of an instant, woke up and blinked once and left the safety of our bed. “It’s time,” I said.
We dressed quickly. I shaved, we showered, we put on our clothes and checked out of the hotel. We had breakfast in a diner around the corner, a greasy spoon something like the place where I had slung hash in New York. Grace’s Lunch on Columbus Avenue. How long ago had that been? Days? Weeks? Years? It was hard to tell, impossible to believe. It was way back, buried somewhere, over and done with.
I don’t remember what I ate that morning. I don’t even remember that I ate, but I must have. Eggs, probably. But it’s only a guess. Whatever it was, I didn’t taste it. I got through with it and Cindy finished whatever in hell she had ordered, and we got out of there.
It was a cool gray sort of morning. The streets were relatively empty, the sky overcast, the temperature more than bearable. A good day for watching a football game, something like that.
I wondered whether it would be a good day for murder.
We walked around a corner, walked a block, turned another corner and kept going. I caught sight of the house, the big frame house where everything was going to happen. The money shop.
“That’s it, Ted.”
“I know.”
The gun was in the waistband of my trousers and the jacket hid it. But I could feel it. The metal was very cold, or felt that way.
“How, Ted?”
We’d been over it a dozen times. I spelled it out for her again anyhow.
“Ring the bell, he comes to the door, I push inside. I take care of him, you come in. That’s all.”
“If there’s two of them?”
“Then he recognizes me. Then I get the drop on them. Better give me a hand if I need it. But I won’t need it. It’ll be smooth as silk. Bunkie or no Bunkie there’s not a thing for you to worry about. It’s going to be silk-smooth.”
Silence. Now we were in front of the house. Time to go in and no sense standing around outside, being seen. Easy to say. Harder to do. She was holding my hand, holding it tight, and maybe the fear she was feeling doubled my own strength. I don’t know.
“Ted—”
“Let’s go, honey.”
“Ted, no killing—”
Half-statement, half-question. She wanted to know and she didn’t want to know. I told her no killing. Hell, that was what she wanted to hear. I could always fight with her later, or just go ahead.
Or whatever.
“And no shooting. The neighbors might hear.”
“Sure,” I said. “Come on, baby.”
There was a side door, which was a break. That was the one we picked. I made her stand out of sight while I leaned on the bell. I gave a hell of a lean. If I had things figured right, Casper was still sacked out after a hard night watching the late late show on television and pouring some beer down his throat. If I could get him out of bed it wouldn’t hurt the cause any. An opponent with his eyes still closed is the best kind in the world.
“Ted—”
“He’ll be coming. Relax.”
Relax? Sure.
I heard footsteps outside, spun around and watched the mailman walk past. No mail for the unofficial bureau of engraving and printing. That was good.
Then footsteps from inside. Footsteps coming toward the door. I yanked the gun out of the waistband of my pants and flicked off the safety catch. A voice, thin as a rail, came through the door.
“Who is it?”
“Telegram.” What the hell. That’s how they always did it in the movies. I wondered what I’d do if he told me to stick it under the door. Probably tell him he had to sign for it. The movies are a great educational institution.
But he didn’t play games. He opened the door, his eyes blurry with sleep, and I put the gun in his face. That made the eyes open up some. They went wide with shock and opaque with pure terror.
“Who—”
Casper. He looked like Casper the friendly ghost. His hair was straggly and magnificently uncombed, his face said that a lot of beer went with the late show. He was a mess. A badly shaken mess.
He was wearing pajamas, a pretty simple-looking print with green predominating, and his body showed through. The bones showed. I wondered how different he would look if he were the one with the gun. Then the scared eyes would be killer’s eyes and the mouth would foam like a mad dog.
It was good, thinking that way. It kept me from feeling sorry for him.
I shoved him inside, moved in after him. I tried to decide whether to knock him out now or later. Then I remembered Craig. I had to find out if he was around.
“Be cool,” I told Casper. “This isn’t for you. It’s for Bunkie Craig. He around?”
He shook his head but his eyes said yes.
“You better play it straight,” I advised him. “Or I kill you by mistake.”
“In the bedroom.”
“Upstairs or down?”
“Upstairs.”
That was fine with me.
“Look, Mac,” he whined. “You get Bunkie, huh? Then you let me alone. I’m a right guy. I won’t get in your way.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Huh?”
I spoke to her without looking at him. I told her to come on in and she did. It took him three looks at her before he figured it out, remembered who she was, knew all at once that Craig was not the sole reason for our presence.
He became very frightened.
“Turn around, Casper.”
He didn’t want to. There’s something about putting your back to a loaded gun that is most unpleasant no matter who you are and sheer horror if you are a gutless wonder like Casper. But he made it finally, and I hit him.
With the gun. On the side of the head just over the ear. Not hard enough to crack the skull, not so gentle that he could stay awake. He fell soundlessly, doubled up and pitched forward on his face. I figured he’d be out for half an hour but I was taking no chances.
“Watch him,” I told her. “If he moves so much as an eyelash, belt him one.”
“With what?”
I looked at her. “Your shoe,” I said. “Take it off right now.”
She was a good kid and she didn’t ask questions. She took off her shoe. It had a spike heel that you could drive a tent-stake with. It was better than a sap.
“Now sit down next to him,” I said. “And hold the shoe by the toe. If he moves, hit him in the head. Not too hard but hard enough.”
Maybe it was melodrama, kneeling next to an unconscious man and all ready to hit him if he groaned. Melodrama is better than dying. We were taking enough chances to begin with. I left her with Casper and started looking for Craig.
The downstairs was a cyclone’s aftermath. Casper was a lousy housekeeper. There were beer cans all over the floor, paper plates on the tables with uneaten food still on them, general disorder throughout. I wondered how different the place must have looked when Cindy and Lori were living there. Then I thought about Lori, who was dead now. And about Cindy, who had been shacked up with Reed. Those were things I didn’t want to think about. Not now.
I found the stairs and took them as quickly and silently as I could. One of them was creaky and I cursed it silently, then kept right on going. The gun in my hand didn’t feel cold anymore. It was warm now, warm and alive and ready. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it.
I tried two doors before I found Bunkie’s bedroom. It was sort of nerve-wracking, believe me. I screwed up my courage, opened a door, and the room was empty. But when I found him I had no worries.
He was asleep.
I must have given him a bad time in New York. He was still wearing bandages and he needed a few new teeth. But on him the bandages looked good.
I stood there waiting for something, God knows what. I suppose I was waiting for him to wake up. It would be easier with him awake, easier and harder at the same time. But I couldn’t let him wake up. It wasn’t the bright thing to do, and now I had to do the bright thing all alone. Or else Cindy and I could throw in the sponge.
It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. At first I froze completely and couldn’t do it at all. Then I thought about Reed and Baron, and I thought about Musso and Lori, and I thought about what they all would have done to us. That didn’t make it a hell of a lot easier but by then I was through thinking and ready to act.
I hit him with the butt of the gun.
Not gently, like Casper, but hard. Not over the ear, like Casper, but on the bridge of the nose. Not to knock him out, like Casper. To kill him.
It wasn’t too easy. I don’t think I could have hit him a second time, not the way I felt just then. But I didn’t have to. Once was enough. I felt bone give under the heavy gun butt and when I picked the gun up I found out that the shape of his skull wasn’t the same. There was a slight depression over his nose.
You can kill a man that way with your bare hands if you know how. It’s a kill chop, and properly executed you break off a piece of the frontal bone and drive it back into the brain, killing instantly.
It’s tough with your bare hand. You have to be good. But when you use the butt of a gun there is nothing to it at all. It’s a snap.
I took a breath, let it out, then stuck the gun back in the waistband of my trousers and reached for his pulse. It wasn’t a hellishly huge surprise not to find any pulse.
Bunkie Craig was dead.
I stood there for a few minutes and stared at him. I should have felt something—hatred for the corpse, pity, self-disgust, anything. Musso had been different—then he had a gun and so did I, and I had to shoot him to stay alive. Bunkie Craig had been a wounded man asleep and I had made sure he would sleep until Judgment Day.
But I felt nothing, nothing at all. I was a machine, a well-oiled properly primed machine with one goal in mind. I had no tears for Bunkie Craig. They were all for myself if we failed. Then I could cry. Not now.
I turned away from death and left the bedroom, found the stairs again and followed them to the bottom. I walked away from Craig and found Cindy and Casper, my girl watching him like a hawk, my prisoner still out. She looked at me and asked me with her eyes.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. And wondered if it was or not.
I didn’t kill Casper. He had things to tell us, things we had to know. I let him sleep for a few minutes, then dumped a glass of water over his face. It did the trick. He came up sputtering and shaking all at once. It made a pretty picture. When a weak man is helpless it makes him look much less like a crook. I couldn’t help wondering how a fish like Casper had gotten involved with hard guys like Reed and Baron. I had a hunch that all I had to do to find out was hand him my gun.
