teach her not to come around here bugging him like this when he was caught up in something so damned big, what the hell was the matter with these chicks? But he didn’t hit her. He didn’t hit her because Kilduff was going to arrive here any minute now and he had to get rid of her before then and he couldn’t get rid of her if she was lying on her ass on the fieldstone walk.
He said in a cold, deliberate voice, “Fran, I’m telling you, if you know what’s good for you, go home. Get out of here and go home right now. I mean it, Fran.”
There was hurt and pain deep in her amber eyes now, as if she had just fully accepted a great, sad truth—not that he gave a crap what it was; all he cared about at that moment was getting rid of her. He thought she would obey his command, expected it with that hurt and pain in her eyes, but she caught him off guard. She said, “I’m coming inside, Larry,” and before he could react she was past him and walking down the hallway into the parlor.
Rage welled up inside Drexel until the blood pounding in his ears sounded like a distorted drum-roll. He slammed the door savagely and went in after her. She had turned and was standing in front of the scrolled desk, her plastic raincoat dripping crystalline beads of water onto the rug. She waited until he had taken two steps into the parlor from the hallway, his eyes blazing, and then she said in a loud, clear voice, without preamble, “I’m pregnant, Larry. I’m going to have your baby.”
It stopped him. It stopped him cold. His mouth opened, and then closed, and he stood there staring at her.
You bitch! he thought finally. I ought to kill you, you stupid little bitch!
11:28.
The street was half a block long, and ended abruptly in a white city barricade that stretched most of its width. To the left, facing in, was a densely grown area—a miniature wilderness—containing oak and eucalyptus and high grass and wild blackberry. To the right was a neatly trimmed green box hedge, jutting some ten feet thickly skyward, which fenced the property of some unseen and grandiose dwelling. Beyond the barricade was a short expanse of deciduous turf that formed a gradual down-slope leading to a narrow, meandering creek below.
The limping man parked the rented Mustang nose-up to the white barricade, shut off the lights and the engine, removed the key from the ignition, and stepped quickly out into the thinly falling drizzle. He went around to the rear and opened the trunk. He put on a pair of black pigskin gloves and worked swiftly there for something less than two minutes, darting occasional looks over his shoulder at the cross street, seeing nothing. Finally, he lifted from the trunk the double-strength shopping bag. He closed the deck lid and, carrying the shopping bag in the bend of his left arm, moved rapidly around the near end of the barricade.
He began to climb slowly, cautiously, down the slippery bank, with his free hand holding onto bushes that grew there, digging the heels of his canvas shoes into the spongy ground. After a time, he stood on the sharp stones at the edge of the creek bed. In its center, a narrow, shallow stream of rain water rushed past; the creek had been dry when he had last seen it, six weeks earlier.
The limping man rested there for a moment, and then started off to his left, walking slowly, cradling the shopping bag in close to his body. It was very dark. The sky was the color of soot, and the trees and bushes limned against it were little more than formless black shadows. He paused once, listening. There was no sound, save for the temperate fall of the rain and the sibilant rush of the creek water. The night was wet and black and silent around him—a huge enveloping blanket—and he was safely hidden within its folds. He moved forward again.
When he reached the half-upright log imbedded in the soil at the creek’s edge, he stopped and peered across to the opposite side. He could see the wall there, a solid black line atop the bank, and he nodded once and began to pick his way gingerly across the bed. It was littered with leaves and twigs and mud and various bits and pieces of garbage carried and deposited by the accelerated rain water. The footing was treacherous, but he reached the opposite bank without incident.
He began to work his way upward along its surface. The contours of the stone-and-mortar wall became evident to him, and then he was standing before it, with his left hand steadying his body on the cold, moist stone. He could not see over the top of the wall from that point. He went to a build-up of silt on a higher section of ground near the far end of the wall. From there he was able to peer cautiously over the top at what lay beyond it.
An elongation of pale light spilled out through a glass-enclosed archway in the house across the interior patio; it gave substance to the shapes within the patio. So Green was still up and about, the limping man thought. Well, all right. Better if he was asleep, but not really that important; he could come back later of course, but he was here now, and there was really no need in taking unnecessary chances.
Carefully, he placed the shopping bag on the flat top of the wall. He swung himself up by utilizing the power in his wrists and forearms, favoring his game leg; he was an agilely poised black shadow for an instant atop the wall, and then he dropped inside the patio, crouching on one of the
He reached the wall beside the glassed archway and flattened himself against the damp stucco. His ears strained, and voices—faint, but comprehensible—filtered through the glass.
“...are you going to do, Larry?”
Woman’s voice. Green had company. Well, maybe she would leave, but he couldn’t wait very long. If she was still in there when the time came, then that was too bad for her. Damned whore anyway, what did it matter? He couldn’t afford to be humane, not now, not now.
“... expect me to do?” Green’s voice, harsh and cold.
“Marry me, Larry. That’s what I expect you to do.”
“Marry you?” Laughter, without humor. “Jesus! I told you to take the goddamned pill, didn’t I? Is it my fault you’re too stupid to do it?”
Silence. And then: “You . . . never loved me at all, did you? You only said the words, lied to me, to . . . to...”
“To get into your pants, sweetheart.” Viciously, with contempt. “The only thing I ever cared about, baby, was that hot little fanny of yours. So there it is, all out in the open at last. Now are you going to get out of here, or would you like me to tell you some more? Like what a really lousy lay you are. And how I was thinking about other girls the whole time, even when I was—”
“No! Oh God, Larry, stop it! Stop it!”
“Then get out!”
Vague weeping sounds. Footsteps, rapid, retreating. Door slamming. Silence.
Now.
The limping man squatted and placed the shopping bag on the wet stone at his feet. He lifted out the gallon jug which had once contained apple cider, but which now contained the high-octane gasoline he had purchased at a Chevron station in Belmont forty-five minutes earlier. He removed the protective section of cellophane food wrap from the top and felt the strips of cotton sheeting which were stuffed into the bottle’s neck. Dry. All right.
He got the windproof butane lighter from his overcoat pocket and straightened up, bringing the gallon jug with him, crooked in his left arm, and he held the lighter poised in his right. He flipped the cap down and his gloved thumb rasped the flint wheel. A thin, high jet of flame shot up. He held it to the sheet strips, watching them flare and begin to bum brightly, and then he stepped out to stand directly in front of the glassed archway, the jug held chest-high like a basketball about to be passed, and Green was there, with his back to him, ten feet away and moving, and almost casually then, the limping man thrust forward, releasing and stepping back, and the flaming container shattered the archway glass and shattered the stillness and shattered itself on the floor inside in a great, rushing, mushrooming sweep of heat and fire and destruction . . .
