about the scar too. That was what they had been doing, joshing him, and he was joshing back when he gave permission to do it. Hey, had he told anybody they could carve a scar on him? Great God, he was out of his head if he had told anyone they could scar him.
His right arm gave him a stab of pain when he lowered it. That Brother had just about torn his arm off with that judo stuff, and had looked as if he wanted to laugh like hell while he was doing it. The man liked inflicting pain. When they got ready to cut a scar on his face, Brother would enjoy throwing him down and sitting on him while they did it.
If Harsh didn’t want to know how that felt, he had better get out of this dump.
He ran into the bedroom and glared at the wall safe. The dirty, dirty, dirty bastard, putting all his money in the safe and then locking it with two keys and giving him one key to tantalize him.
He glanced at the window and saw it was night outside. The bright Florida moonlight was shining in the window. Night, he thought, was the time to slip away from here because nobody would see him.
He turned toward the bed. His eye caught the bottle of Benedictine on the liquor cart, and he brought up short. He began to nod drunkenly to himself. “She got five hundred from Brother, she’s bound to have some left.” His voice had a vicious note. He picked up the bottle of Benedictine and shuffled to the door. He opened the door and hung his head out in the hall, then set out for the door of Vera Sue Crosby’s bedroom.
Vera Sue wore a sheer green silk nightgown which fit tightly to her hips and breasts and loosely elsewhere. She had not been able to sleep either. She was sitting in a low armchair, her feet stuffed in her oldest pair of gold- embroidered mules.
“Oh, hello, Walter.”
“I been thinking about you so hard I can’t sleep, Vera Sue. Can I come in?”
“Well now I don’t know, Walter. You have been acting like you were real mad with me.”
“I know. I been feeling sorry about that. I been laying in my room for hours trying to think of how to make up with you, but I couldn’t think of any way. So I just decided to come over. How about having a drink of water with me, at least?”
Sharing a drink of water was a long-standing joke with them. “Well, I guess you can come in, Walter.”
He entered and closed the door. The bedroom was elaborate to the point of being ridiculous, the furniture Louis XIV silk brocades, the woodwork carved and painted and gold-leafed. He knew Vera Sue would love it.
“You know, I like seeing you in a place like this, Vera Sue. Being in a room like this, baby, a real fine room like this, is what you should have. All the time I been laying there trying to think of a way to make up for how I acted, I wished I could give you something like this, a room that was nice enough for you, and here you were in the room all the time. Ain’t that a coincidence?”
“You have been drinking, Walter.”
“Yeah, I guess I was trying to whiskey-drown the son of a bitch that is me. But you know something, I was too big a son of a bitch for drowning in anybody’s whiskey.”
“I’m sort of glad you come, Walter. I been mad at you, but I been lonesome as hell.”
“I’m glad I came.”
“I’m glad you remembered I like Benedictine.”
“I’m glad I remembered.”
“I had some left, but it was all right for you to bring yours. I been getting up every little bit and having a nip.”
“To look at you, Vera Sue, I wouldn’t know you had been drinking any.”
“A whole bottle tonight, Walter. I drank a whole bottle, one of them big bottles like that one, Walter. The whole bottle.”
“You sure carry it well.”
“Do I? You have been drinking too, haven’t you? Did you say you had? You carry it well too, Walter.”
“We both carry everything pretty well, don’t we?”
He poured some Benedictine in two water glasses and Vera Sue drank hers rapidly. The little bitch goes after the stuff like it was Tom Collins, he thought. When you drank Benedictine the way you were supposed to, he knew a glass was supposed to last half an hour or so. He was glad she had been hitting the stuff before he got there, though. He wouldn’t need as long to get her real tight.
“Walter, can you tell me why we’re here? Nobody talks to me. Act like I was measles, that’s what they do. And you know something, I’m beginning to feel like I was in jail in the damn place.”
“I guess I been poor company.”
“Walter, I’m getting scared.”
“Well, Jesus take us, baby, I didn’t dream you were worried. I thought you knew what was going on. I thought Brother told you. The son of a bitch, I told him to tell you that we were partners in the thing. I told Brother, look, I said, there’s a good straight kid, that Vera Sue, and what I get, she gets half of. Either count her in for half or count me out, that’s what I said.”
“Count me in what, Walter?”
“Why, it’s simple as hell. I invented a new kind of film emulsion. Big money deal. Brother is the bankroll. He’s going to manufacture the film for me.”
Vera Sue moved from the chair to the bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face with her hands, frowning. “I didn’t know you were an inventor, Walter.”
“Yeah, I ain’t a very hot one, but I’m an inventor. Took me one hell of a time to work it out. I been fooling with it since I was a kid, or anyway for years.” He wanted to stop lying and start laughing. He could hardly keep a straight face. She was taking it all in—he was a photographer and therefore he knew enough to invent a film emulsion, something that real scientists probably worked on for years, and mostly failed at besides. “Vera Sue, this film emulsion I invented, it is a kind of ultraviolet emulsion, which is a little more high-powered than the infrared. What it does, you take a picture of a person with it, it shows the type of blood they got. That was what all the stink about that O-negative blood was about. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know the film was that good when I invented it, and maybe I wouldn’t have known, only this Brother got the detective from Kansas City investigating me and that tipped me off I had something. I guess he would have stole my invention if I hadn’t got wise, but I did get wise, and I put it up to him cold gosling, and here we are.”
“Walter.”
“Yeah?”
“Is all that the truth?”
“Jesus Christ, you think I could think up a lie like that?”
“Well, then, I guess there is no need for me to be scared and feel like a prisoner, is there, Walter?”
“Not a bit. Here, how about a kiss?”
“Okay. Just one kiss, though.”
He pushed his mouth against hers and presently she dug her teeth into his lip. The Benedictine slopped out of her glass on her hand and she threw glass and all in the air. Benedictine showered down on them. “Bite me back, Walter. But not too hard.” He found out that having only one hand was quite a handicap. She finally took off the gown herself lying on the bed and writhing and squirming out of the garment, then throwing the gown up in the air the way she had tossed the liquor. The gown swirled around above them and fell back to the floor, skating from side to side in the air the way a leaf falls. The light fell across her body giving it a glow like cream. Her nipples were like acorns and hurt his chest through his shirt. “Goddamn you, Walter, you still got your shoes on.”
When he was sure she was asleep he got out of bed. He leaned down and gave her shoulder a gentle push and she rolled over on her back, her heavy breathing changing to snoring. He grinned. That was what he wanted her to do, snore. It was not hard to get her to snore. She was a snoring machine, this babe, he thought. Now, if she stopped snoring he would know she had awakened and be warned.
