one so it would settle things. He brought his right fist up toward Brother’s middle, but Brother pushed the fist aside easily. Brother lifted his cupped hands and clapped them together against Harsh’s ears. The effect on Harsh’s eardrums and brain was agonizing. He was sure he had been given a mild concussion. Brother seized Harsh’s right arm and turned with the arm so that his back was to Harsh, the thumb and wrist in a trap-hold which was the most painful thing Harsh had ever had anyone put on him. His wrist and thumb filled with splintering pain, until he thought fire would come out of his ears. He toppled backwards onto the bed when Brother released him. He felt Brother tear open his shirt and begin pulling the taped-on money loose from the skin. Brother’s eyes shone insanely and he drew the tape loose slowly and agonizingly, panting with pleasure as the tape brought the coarse belly hair out by the roots. When Brother arose, the packet of money was in his hands, all of it, Harsh’s nineteen hundred as well as the fifty thousand.
“Mr. Harsh, I give an order only once. I state only fact. I do not threaten, bicker, chisel, or bargain. If any time you hear me make a statement which you wish to construe as a threat, stop. Stop. If I have said it, it is fact, not a threat. A fact beyond recall, unalterable, unassailable, unchangeable, a fact.”
“You got my nineteen hundred there!” Harsh was half blinded with pain.
“Get up.”
“Damn you!”
“Get to your feet.”
Harsh’s ears felt as if steam was escaping through them and he wondered if the eardrums were ruptured. When he saw Brother take a step toward him, he hastily rolled off the bed and stood shakily erect. This crazy fool would kill him, like as not.
“Come. I wish to show you something.” Brother turned and walked to a framed painting on the east wall of the bedroom. The painting was an oil copy of Titian’s
“Watch, Harsh. Watch closely. Memorize the combination.” Brother turned the safe dial slowly to four different numbers, reciting each number aloud. He did this again. “Have you got it, Harsh?”
“I think so.”
“Repeat the combination aloud to me to be sure.”
Harsh muttered the numbers, and the directions the dial was turned each time.
Brother nodded. “Now watch closely.”
The inner door was a flat sheet of steel with two openings for keys. It was similar, Harsh recalled, to safety deposit boxes in some banks. Brother drew two keys from his pocket. They were fastened together by a string. He inserted each key in a lock, swung open the door.
“It takes both keys to open the inner door. You understand, Harsh?”
“I get it.”
Brother placed the money in the safe and locked both inner and outer door. He swung the painting back in place. It covered the safe completely. He tore the two keys apart, breaking the string. He put one key in his pocket.
“You get to keep the other key, Harsh.”
He handed Harsh the second key.
“Goddamn it, my nineteen hundred is in there too!”
Brother ignored him. “Only these two keys will open the inner door. I keep one. You keep one. When you have earned your pay, I will give you my key. The money is safe. You know where it is.”
“What about my nineteen hundred?”
Brother turned and walked to the door, went out, closing the door after him.
Harsh went over and lay on the bed, taking care not to jar the cast that enclosed his left arm. He held the key tightly in his right hand.
Harsh slept nine hours. He awakened with the notion he had been trying to cry out in frustration and had been grinding his teeth together. His throat felt dry and his jaws hurt. It was dark in the bedroom, no light at all coming from the big window, and he decided someone had come in while he was asleep and closed the drapes over the window.
He again recalled the grinding sensation with his teeth, and he was alarmed. He inserted an exploratory finger in his mouth, finding the key to the wall safe was secure. His teeth must have been crunching on the key as he slept. He had placed the key in his mouth before he went to sleep, not worrying about swallowing it because he often went to sleep with chewing gum in his mouth and he had never swallowed that. He realized, however, he must find a more practical hiding place for the key.
He did not like so much darkness in the room, it made him uneasy. He pushed up to a sitting position on the bed, found the edge, and lowered his feet to the floor. The ringing that had been in his ears when he went to sleep was no longer there. He decided his eardrums had not been ruptured. Shuffling barefoot to the window, he parted the drapes, and a flood of moonlight spilled over him. Beyond the window the moonlight covered a wide sweep of cucumber-green lawn and a rope of lime-colored driveway lined by palm trees that were as motionless as upclenched fists. The moonlight made everything very clear. On the beach, night birds were chasing along a squirming yarn of white surf and beyond to the horizon the sea was a blue-black bedspread with a pattern of crinkling waves.
Harsh rubbed his jaw with his right hand. The place looked peaceful, he thought, but there was something to be said for packing up and getting the hell out. The manhandling he had taken at the hands of Brother had undermined his confidence. He had underestimated Brother. The man had a tough, sadistic streak. His right hand and arm still ached where Brother had worked on him with that judo trick. He was sure Brother had inflicted most of the pain just for the twisted satisfaction of hurting him. He would be goddamned if he was going to stay around here and be handled like raw meat...
But he was also damned if he’d leave before getting that wall safe open. He tried to recall what he knew about wall safes. It was very little. Could a man wedge something into the inner crack of the safe door, he wondered, and get it open?
Suddenly excited, determined to tackle the safe, he went to his suitcase and found the package of blades for his safety razor. He took one blade from the package and went to the painting and swung it back, exposing the safe dial. He blew on his right hand for luck and tackled the dial, turning it carefully to the numbers as he remembered them. It would not open! He grabbed it, shook it. It would not open. The son of a bitch changed the combination on him, he thought, and his stomach felt tight. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand briskly, trying to recollect the combination. He was sure it was the way he had just worked it. He tried it again, exactly the same way.
The safe’s outer door opened. He leaned against the wall, sweating with relief. Done some damn little thing wrong, he thought. He wiped his nose on his sleeve before continuing, then gripped the safety razor blade by the edge and attacked the crack. The crack was wide enough to admit the blade, but it struck bottom after penetrating about half an inch, and he could feel nothing like a lock or a bolt. He tried forcing the blade to bend and find its way to the bolt. The blade broke. The hinges were constructed so that he could not get at them. He tried another blade, but this one broke as well, cutting his finger. He gave up and stood there leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the safe.
The thing now, did he leave here without the money, or did he stick around for a break? By God, he would stay, that was what he would do. He would lick the thing yet. He closed the safe and got in bed and pulled the sheet up around his neck.
There was an enormous amount of sunshine in the room when he awakened and felt in his mouth for the key. He wondered what would happen if he sneezed or something in his sleep and swallowed the key. How did one get a key out of one’s stomach? How about a magnet? He examined the key and saw it was brass, which was nonmagnetic. He had better find a place for the key, that was what he had better do.
A knock sounded on the door. Throwing the door open, Brother rolled in a small metal cart bearing breakfast, an omelet, coffee, and toast. Brother glanced at Harsh with an expression of dislike, and he did not speak. He left
