“I think I'll sit down,” I said. Now I knew why she had that soured-on-the-world look.
I took a chair on the other side of the small coffee table and looked at Dorris Venci. “Your husband was quite a man, Mrs. Venci,” I said. “I didn't know him long enough to know whether I liked him or not, but I did admire him. There are very few people in this world who share that particular distinction.”
“Just how well did you know my husband, Mr. Surratt?”
“Not very well, as I told you. He was in my cell three days and then they separated us. Oh, I knew who he was, all right. He was the boss of Lake City.”
She smiled, completely without humor. “Would you tell me what you and my husband talked about in prison?”
“A lot of things: both of us had a great admiration for realists, the only real philosophers of modern times. Do you think philosophy a strange subject for a prison discussion? Well, it isn't. A man has to think in prison—work and think—that's about all he has time for. The bad thing about it is that there are so very few people in prisons who are capable of thinking. We spoke about the freedom of the individual.”
“I see. The freedom of the individual to do as he pleases.”
“The freedom of the individual to do as he pleases, providing he has the necessary strength.”
“Yes, there is a difference, isn't there. Tell me, Mr. Surratt, if you had all the money you could ever want, how would you live out your later years?”
“Probably I would retire and concentrate on killing all the people I didn't like.”
“That,” she said, “is what my husband did.”
I sat there for a full thirty seconds without making a move.
She was completely serious. Her face was set and her eyes were as cold as gunsteel. This, I thought, is the wildest thing I ever heard of in my life... but I believed it. So now I knew why John Venci had bothered to spring me—he had foreseen the possibility of his own murder and had wanted a man on his side that he could trust.
But I was too late. Venci was dead.
After a moment she said, “Mr. Surratt, did it ever occur to you, while you were in prison, that my husband might not keep his part of the escape bargain?”
“Never. After that fight of ours I never saw him again, but I never stopped believing. You know why? Because your husband needed me as much as I needed him. For what reason, I didn't know at the time; I just knew we needed each other. He wanted a man he could trust right up to the brink of death, and that was me, because we had the same kind of brains.
“I understand some things now. You just said that your husband had set out to dispose of his enemies—that can be dangerous business, very dangerous, with the kind of enemies John Venci had. He was afraid his enemies would try to kill him before he killed them, and he wanted me around to see that it didn't happen.”
Mrs. Venci said, “You are wrong again, Mr. Surratt. John Venci was afraid of no one or no thing.” She stood up, suddenly. “I'm not sure that I need your help, after all, Mr. Surratt.”
I believe she would have walked out of the room if I hadn't crossed in front of her. “All right,” I said, “I'm wrong. But how about setting me right?”
“I'm not sure I can trust you.”
“If you can't trust me, whom can you trust?”
Yes, who could she trust? Not many people would be capable or willing to pick up John Venci's fight, against John Venci's enemies. “Very well,” she said, after a moment's hesitation. “I'll think about it. I'll contact you tomorrow.”
“Just a minute,” I said. “Do you happen to know a beauty operator you can trust?” Her eyebrows came up just a little. “I want my hairline changed,” I said, “and my hair bleached. I also want a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses.”
“That can be arranged,” she said, “if it proves necessary.” She went out.
We hadn't mentioned money, but I was thinking money all the time. I was thinking of all that money John Venci had made. It was Dorris's money now. And she wasn't a bad looking woman, either. Oh, no, I thought, she's not going to get rid of me now!
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FIRST THING I did the next morning was take a shower. A shower six times a day, I thought, every damn day until I get the stench of that prison out of my body and soul.
At last I got out of the shower and walked naked and dripping into the sitting room and called room service. “I'd like to order breakfast,” I said. “A large pot of coffee and a New York cut steak, sauted in butter.”
There was one thing that Dorris Venci had forgotten when she outfitted me and that was a razor. I called the bell captain and told him to hustle me a razor, and then I went back to the bathroom and showered all over again.
In the light of this new day, I could accept the death of my benefactor with calmness. John Venci was dead and there was nothing I could do about it, so I accepted it. The situation wasn't exactly as I had planned it, but I had to make the best of it. And that was exactly what I intended to do.
I had finished the steak and eggs and was working on the orange juice and coffee when the telephone rang. It was Dorris.
“You're moving,” she said.
“Is that so?”
“This is the address. 2209 North Hampton. Come to apartment 7.”
“Is that all I need to know?”
“Yes.” She hung up.
It was about ten o'clock when I got to the North Hampton address. It was a run-of-the-mill apartment building and not very fancy, certainly not as fancy as the Tower Hotel. I found apartment 7 on the first floor and knocked. There was no answer. I tried the door and it was unlocked, so I walked in.
It was a dark, dank-smelling place; sitting room, bedroom and bath—the same setup I'd had at the hotel. I raised the shades to let in some light, then took an armchair to wait. Maybe five minutes went by, then the door opened and Dorris came in.
“You're prompt,” she said. “That's something.”
“What's the idea of moving me to a place like this? It smells of mice and empty bean cans.”
“Is it worse than the place you had yesterday?”
It was almost impossible to believe that I had been a convict only yesterday, that I had been wading ankle- deep in stinking asphalt, taking all kinds of crap from sadistic idiots like the late Mr. Gorgan. This place wasn't so bad after all.
Dorris had a large bundle in one arm and a newspaper under the other. She handed me the newspaper and went into the kitchen with the other stuff.
“You made the front page,” she said.
“So I see.”
“You're on the radio, too.”
“I'll bet you anything in the world they're already calling me the Mad Dog killer. And Gorgan will be made out a hero. But he'll be a dead one; you can bet your sweet life on that!”
Dorris stepped into the kitchen doorway. “You say that as though you enjoyed killing him.”
“I enjoyed killing Gorgan. It was about the most exhilarating experience of my life just watching the sonofabitch die.”
She stood there for a minute, then went back in the kitchen. She was busy doing something, but I was too satisfied and full of good food to get up and see what it was. I read part of the escape story, but it was the usual crap.
Dorris said, “Remember what I told you when I brought you to Lake City, that you would have to earn your passage?”
“I remember.”
She came into the room this time and stood there in front of me, looking at me. “The time has come,” she said. “I want you to kill a man.”
