calculated strategy made necessary by the intrusion of Roy Prescott.
It was Prescott who had done this to Varney. There was not a day when Varney didn’t go over the chances that he’d had to kill Prescott, wincing at the mistakes he had made, the opportunities he had not recognized until just after they had passed. He had not known Prescott was waiting outside the office building that night in L.A. until it was too late to kill him. At the storefront in Buffalo that Prescott had rented, he had not noticed that there was something wrong with the doorknob before the door had closed. He could have seen that it was a trap without opening the door at all and could have waited for Prescott outside the building with the rifle. He had not seen any of those things in time, and now it was too late. Prescott had become more than a person he hated. Prescott had begun to enter his dreams.
Varney got up and slapped the part of the covers that he judged was Mae’s bottom. “How about some breakfast?”
She lay there for a second, then slowly stretched and rolled over to look at him. “What time is it?”
“Drag your ass out of bed and look at the clock,” he said. “I’m going out, and I want to eat first.”
She sat up, swung her legs out of the bed, and walked stiffly to the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror, brushed her hair back, and then went out into the kitchen. Varney stood a few feet away, watching her impatiently. In a minute she had started the coffee and she was standing in front of the stove with a pair of frying pans on the burners with bacon and eggs popping and sizzling. When they seemed to be going the way they should, she set the table hurriedly, tossing the silverware into approximate positions, then pulled the pans off the stove. She came back with Varney’s plate. He was carefully moving the knives and forks to their correct spots. He sat down and she set the plate in front of him, poured a cup of coffee, and turned to go back to the bathroom.
“Aren’t you going to sit down?”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said. “You know I can’t stand the smell of all that bacon and butter and stuff when I just wake up. It makes me sick.”
He glared at her, and she came back and sat down across from him, holding the coffee just below her chin and sipping it now and then as she watched him. Finally, he put down his fork. “Don’t you think that for nearly a thousand a day, you could act like you want to be with me?”
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” she murmured warily. “It’s just that you’re not nice to me sometimes. I had to brush my hair first, or you’d be finding it in your food. And I didn’t know you wanted to get up this early. I mean after last night . . .”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head slowly, then muttered, “Forget it.”
He had awakened in the middle of the night, thinking about Prescott. He knew that he’d had a dream, something about Coleman, maybe a job they had done together, but then Coleman had somehow stopped being Coleman. Varney had looked at him again, and he had become Prescott. It seemed that Coleman had been Prescott all along, watching Varney do the job, and so he knew everything. Varney had no way to slip away or hide or claim it was self-defense, because Prescott had been there.
Varney had jerked awake in a sweat. It had taken a few minutes to calm himself, but then he was alert. He had lain there for a few more minutes, but then it became an hour. He couldn’t get back to sleep. He had reached out and touched Mae. He had done it without any particular intention, but as soon as he had felt the small shoulder, and run his hand down her side to the thin waist and felt the curve of the hip, he had known. She had still been asleep, and the warmth of her skin felt comforting.
As consciousness had threatened her rest she had resisted, stiffening, then tried to shrug him away to preserve her sleep. That had changed everything. It had made him resentful. He had firmly pulled her to him, and in a moment she was no longer asleep, but trying to cut through the fog of sleep to full consciousness. She’d seemed to sense that something had begun before she’d been aware of it and she should have been aware, and she’d had to catch up with it. The look in her eyes had changed. He had seen them widen in the dark as he’d kissed her, hard, his hands already tugging the nightgown up to her neck.
He had probably been rough—had been rough—but it had been impossible not to be. Last night it had all seemed to come together in the simple, annoyed movement of her shoulder as she pulled away from him in her sleep: being stuck here in Cincinnati with Tracy and her sons bleeding him to death instead of hiding him, everyone taking advantage of his sudden vulnerability, most of all Mae. If it weren’t for her, he would have burst through his lethargy and gotten out of here. When he had been feeling troubled and worried and sleepless she’d had no business jerking away from him like that. What was he supposed to do?
She seemed to see his resentment growing again. She said hastily, “Not that I didn’t like it. I did,” she assured him. “I always like to be with you. I just thought you would probably sleep late this morning, that’s all.”
“Forget it,” he repeated. He stood and went into the bedroom to put on his shorts and sneakers to begin his stretches. He was glad when she went into the bathroom for her shower, because he didn’t have to listen to her or feel her eyes on him. He cut the stretches short and walked toward the door. The telephone rang, and made him jump. He snatched it up. “Yeah?”
It was a man’s voice. “Is Mae there?”
“Yeah, but she can’t come to the phone now. Can I say who’s calling?”
“It’s Duane.” Varney knew who that was. He was one of the messengers that went around distributing stolen stuff all over the Midwest. About a month ago, when Varney had gotten into an argument with Tracy over her wanting Mae to work a party, Duane had been one of the ones the party was for. Varney glanced at the calendar. It was not about a month. It was exactly a month.
Varney said, “Wait a minute. I’ll tell her.”
He went toward the bathroom, his mind gnawing at him. Something was going on. He stopped before he got there, and returned to the phone. “Duane?”
“Yeah?”
“She says to come pick her up at eleven.”
“Really?” Duane sounded pleased. “Eleven? Where?”
“Here,” said Varney. “You know the address?”
“Yeah, I been there,” he said. “Thanks.”
Varney hung up the telephone and went back to stretching. When Mae came out of the bathroom, he had begun lifting weights. Her head gave a little jerk, as though she were surprised and a little frightened to see him there. She said, “I thought you were going out for your run.”
“I am,” said Varney coldly. “You lift, then you run.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said softly.
“Can you do me a favor this morning?”
“I guess,” she said. “What is it?”
“Go out to the Sportmart on the mall. I need a new pair of shorts like these—any color as long as it’s dark— and another twenty pounds of weight for this bar. See? Two ten-pound disks like this? They’re all standard, so you can’t screw it up.”
“Okay . . .” she said doubtfully. “They don’t have shopping carts at the mall. Will I be able to carry them?”
“Hell, yes,” he said. “You can carry twenty pounds. If you can’t, get the clerk to do it. The mall opens at ten, and I’d like you back by one.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go as soon as I’m dressed. I’ll be there when they open.”
He went into his sit-ups. When she left, she said, “See you later.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. He heard her steps on the stairway, then stood beside the window to watch. She went outside, got into the car, and drove off. He closed the window and lowered the shade. He changed his clothes, went to the closet, and took out the two bags he had bought a week ago from the hardware store. Mae had been begging him to brighten the place up a little, so he had bought what he needed to paint the kitchen.
He laid the plastic tarp on the floor, moved the furniture out of the way, set the two gallon cans on two opposite corners and the roller and pan on another, then sat down on the bed and waited patiently.
At exactly eleven he heard the car. He moved to the kitchen and listened carefully to the sound of the footsteps. They were quick and heavy, but there was only one set. He looked outside and saw the car, and verified that there was nobody waiting in it. He heard the knock and opened the door.
Duane was big, with a puffy pink face and a shock of blond hair that seemed to be duplicated on his thick
