I wasn't in the least surprised. I had known all along that the man who pulled the trigger on John Venci was going to get killed, and probably by me. It was in Dorris Venci's eyes every time she mentioned her husband's name.
“I'm in debt to you,” I said. “I was in debt to your husband, too. A lot of things have been said about Roy Surratt, but nobody ever accused him of welshing on a debt. Whom do you want killed?”
She stared at me for a full half minute. “Until I let you in my car yesterday,” she said quietly, “My husband was the only completely evil man I ever knew. But you're just like him; you're enough like him to be the son he never had.”
This jarred me a bit, since I had been going under the assumption that Dorris Venci had loved her husband. But I was beginning to learn that she was the kind of woman who said and did some pretty erratic things, things that you had to take in stride.
“I'll take that as a compliment,” I said. “By my rules it would be a great honor being John Venci's son. But let's get something straight, just for the record. This person you want killed, he's the one who murdered your husband, or had it done, isn't he? That being the case, you must have loved your husband very much, in spite of this thing that obsessed him, this thing you call 'evil'. Or maybe because of it. You don't have to answer, because it is written all over you; you loved him. What I want to know is why do you look down your nose at me if I'm so much like the husband you loved?”
She just stared at me with those Zeiss lens eyes of hers. I didn't like being stared at like that; it was about time to take Dorris Venci down a peg or two.
“You know,” I said, “I've got a funny feeling about you, Mrs. Venci. You brought up the subject of evil just a minute ago, and still you were in love with a man like John Venci. Now a situation like that makes for some interesting theorizing. Apparently you have a perfectly normal and conventional loathing for evil, but a look at the record will show that you are obviously attracted by it, too. Wouldn't you say this is an interesting contradiction?”
I smiled, enjoying myself. She wasn't so damn snooty now, and there was a difference in the way she stared at me.
“Interesting,” I said, “still these contradictions are encountered every day. Sane-mad, pro-anti, they're all separated by the thinnest thread. One kind of fanaticism can be exchanged for another.”
She stood there rigid and icy. “Roy Surratt!” she sneered. “Murderer, thief, blasphemer. You're a fine one to talk about fanaticism.”
“Tell me something, just one more thing. I'd like to know why a woman who loathes evil would marry a man like John Venci.”
I stared into the empty depth of those empty eyes and knew that she was frightened. She almost frightened me, the way she looked.
I had started the thing as a gag because she had made me sore. There I was offering to kill a man, just for her, because she wanted him killed. I was going to do it, and what did she do? She had stood there looking down her nose at me, looking at me as though I'd been something the dog had dragged in on her clean carpet, and that made me burn!
That was when I had started probing. We'll see about this superior business, I thought. I'll stick pins in her, and keep sticking pins in her until I hit a nerve, and then we'll just open her up and see what makes this bitch tick. I was getting pretty tired of people looking down their noses at me.
Now she just stood there, staring.
What the hell have I got on my hands? I thought. Christ, she gave me the willies, standing there like a piece of ice statuary, those eyes of hers fixed on me.
You'd better figure it out, I thought, and pretty fast too, because she looks like she's about ready to blow up in your face. Oh, she looked cool enough, she looked icy, but a bomb looks cool too until you move up closer and hear the timing mechanism ticking away the seconds, and then you know you'd better find the fuse and disarm it, and not take all day about it, either.
I took a step toward her and she backed away, like a shadow backing away, and those eyes never looked at anything but my eyes. By God, I thought, I'm going to stop sticking pins in people, especially broads.
And that was when I pegged her.
Suddenly all the pieces fell into place, and I grinned. I had Dorris Venci pegged now, sure as hell!
I said, “What's wrong with you, Mrs. Venci?”
She didn't make a sound.
I took a step forward and she moved back until her back was against the wall. You could almost hear the scream in her eyes. I knew her little secret now, and it had been the simplest thing in the world, once I got the scent of it.
All I had to do was ask myself what kind of woman was it that would go for John Venci, really go for him, not love him, necessarily? That was where I had been thrown off—confusing love with something else. Once I got back on the right track, the answer was simple. John Venci had been a tough boy; he had had a good, hard tough brain. Tough! So any woman who went for John Venci had to be a glutton for punishment. And that was the answer.
There was nothing new or unique about it; masochism is as old as Adam.
I said, “You look upset, Mrs. Venci. Why don't you sit down and take it easy for a minute.”
She said, “Don't touch me! Don't
“Gods don't die, Mrs. Venci,” I said, “really they don't.”
She made a small, thin sound—thinner than a spider's thread, harder than iron, and I grabbed her. I grabbed one shoulder and jerked her around, then I caught her wrist, twisting it behind her, and threw a hammer-lock on her. Her mouth snapped open and that thin little sound came out again as I put my back into it. I applied the pressure. I jerked up on her arm and jammed her clinched fist against the base of her skull.
She was very strong for a woman, and it was no easy matter keeping the hammer-lock on her. She fought like a tigeress, hissing, cursing, clawing, and then she tramped down on my instep with the point of her French heel and I damn near tore her arm off at the shoulder.
“Don't!” she said, her voice sounding like it was being squeezed through a sieve. “Don't! Don't! Don't!...” Then it trailed off and she began shuddering.
I had her hard against the wall now and she suddenly turned to jelly in my hands. She had no more strength or resistance than a pile of quivering flesh. I was completely fascinated with this transformation. Of course, I had heard about masochism, but this was the first time I ever walked up to it and looked it in the face.
When I put my back into that hammer-lock it was just like throwing a switch that set off a blast furnace. I could feel lust surge through her like a thousand volt shock. She gasped and closed her eyes and mashed herself against me, making little whimpering sounds, sounds like a whipped dog makes, a dog that is so completely broken that it is afraid to yelp.
I could have had her. There is absolutely no doubt about that; I could have had her but the phenomenon itself so completely fascinated me that I almost forgot for a while what it meant. But it crossed my mind, all right, you can bet your life on it. It wasn't because I didn't think of it that nothing happened.
It simply wouldn't be the smart thing to do—it would indicate that I needed her more than she needed me, and that would not do. I let her go.
She couldn't believe it. She stared at me, waiting, her breathing very shallow and rapid, and at last she realized that I was not following through. There was horror in her eyes. She leaned against the wall, she pressed her face to the wall, biting her lower lip as great tears spilled down her cheeks.
I said, “We learn something every day, don't we Mrs. Venci? Today we learned who's boss, isn't that right?”
I took her arm again. “Isn't that right?”
She nodded. Quickly, eagerly, the instant I touched her.
“All right,” I said. “You'd better relax; we've still got some business to talk over, remember?”
I went to the kitchen and had a glass of water. I thought: I hope she never finds out what that cost me!
I began to calm down, slowly. I rested against the kitchen sink and had another glass of water and after a while I felt pretty good, pretty proud of myself.
Yes sir, I thought, things are looking up. They certainly are! I had possessed her as completely as if I had laid her; I was boss now!
