Читать книгу You'll Get Yours - Thomas Wills - Страница 4

I LIE on the bed in my shorts, my legs spread-eagle, the back of my head resting on my hands to keep it from the soaking pillow. The window is shut and the blinds are drawn, just as I found them, and it is very hot.

I have not moved for the past hour, not since five minutes after I slipped into the room past the dozing Mexican clerk in the shabby little foyer below. Not even to light a cigarette. I even breathe through my mouth.

Next door it is not so quiet. The bottle clinks against the edge of the glass. Then the bottle thumps heavily on the table top. There is no rattle of ice. Ice? In this godforsaken hole?

He has been at it since I arrived, and for who knows how many hours and days and weeks before.

Drink hearty, Archie. Down the hatch, kid. Bottoms up, you son of a bitch, you’re drinking your last.

It has been getting dark in a hurry. When the sun goes down in little Tia Rosa, it sinks.

Tia Rosa, end of the line.

I swing my legs slowly to the floor and stand up. The outline of my body remains on the sheet, a silhouette in sweat. It is time for the blood. Archie St. George’s. The tears? They’ve all been shed back in New York. By three beautiful women.

Back to the chair, to my tourist suit; white palm beach jacket and trousers, brown-and-white shoes, white shirt opened at the neck, white panama hat. I dress silently and unhurriedly.

A cough sounds through the cracked, paper-thin partition. A hacking cough. Too much tobacco, too much cheap whiskey, too much everything. That’s all right, Archie. Dr. Glines is right next door. He’s got the prescription for that cough, kid. I buckled the holster to my chest, went back to the bed and got the .38 from beneath the pillow. This’ll fix that cough.

I pull the blind away from the window. The narrow dusty road beneath the window is no longer yellow but black. The shack across the street is not white any more. The only sign of life in the village is on the corner. There a dim light flickers. That’s La Cantada, the local ginmill.

I’m not worried about that. When I leave I’ll be heading in the opposite direction. My car is in a lean-to four blocks away. In an hour I’ll be back in Brownsville, USA, and heading north again. Maybe Archie will come home again, too. In a baggage car, in a steel box with Railway Express stickers all over it. Addressed to me, maybe.

Okay, Archie. Drink up. I can’t wait to see your face.

I had my fingers on the knob of the door that connects the rooms when the heels clicked in the hallway outside. I took my hand away.

It couldn’t be her. But who else walks like that? The steps slowed. They were cautious now. They passed my door and then stopped.

There was a light knock on his door. Then a voice.

“Archie? Are you in there, Archie?”

It was her. I found myself staring at my hands. They were fists, shaking fists. I felt rage knotting my forearms, tightening my chest.

He didn’t answer. I heard him cross the room unsteadily. He opened the door to her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said. The liquor was strong in him.

“I want to come in,” she said.

“Why?”

“Let me in, Archie.” Her voice was on hands and knees.

“Why sure, baby. Sure. For you, anytime.”

The door closed. There was silence. I knew exactly how she would walk inside, then stop and look around at the cheap, dingy room. I could see him, too, standing near the door, leaning against it with his shoulders, going over her with his brown eyes.

Archie said, “Okay. Now what?”

“How long have you been here, Archie?”

“Too goddamned long.” His voice was thick; surly and thick. There wasn’t a trace of the old smoothness left. “I hope you brought money, baby, ’cause I’m coming back.”

“Are you?”

“You bet your life I’m coming back.”

“What about Barney?”

He laughed. “Barney? You think I’m down here on account of Barney?”

“He’s looking for you, Archie. He’s going to kill you.”

He laughed again.

“It isn’t anything to laugh at,” she told him.

“Sure it is. It’s the yak of the year, baby. Barney Glines is a goddamned boy scout. And you. You know what you are? A goddamned girl scout.” His voice toughened. “What the hell’d you come down here for anyhow?”

“What do you think, Archie?”

“I thought you and me were all washed up, baby. Out of sight out of mind, they always say.”

“It didn’t work out that way, Archie.”

“So I see. I didn’t think I’d made that much impression.” His voice was a leer.

Hers was soft and beguiling. “But you did. You made a very big impression, Archie.”

“How’d you follow me, baby?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

I’ll say it wasn’t. It had taken me three long weeks to get to him. I had to give her credit.

She said, “But I’m here now.”

“In the flesh,” he said. “How’s about a little drink, baby? To celebrate?”

“All right.”

The bottle touched two glasses.

“Got to take it straight,” he told her. “This isn’t the Waldorf.”

“Or the Park East.”

That got a chuckle out of him. “No,” he said, “it’s not even the Park East. Here’s to you, baby.”

“Here’s to you, Archie.”

A pause. When he spoke again I knew he was next to her. His voice was deep in his throat.

“You look awful good.”

“I feel good, Archie. Now that I’m here.”

“No hard feelings, kid?”

Another silence. Maybe his arm was around her waist. The arm with the restless fingers.

“Drink your drink, Archie.”

He laughed. “In a hurry?” he asked.

“Yes. A big hurry.”

“Can’t keep a lady waiting.” I heard his glass come down hard on the table. “Take ’em off, baby.”

She didn’t say anything. It was worse than if she’d spoken. I backed away from the wall as though I’d been slugged. From the other room came scattered sounds, some of them indistinct, some of them I could label. She had taken her shoes off, for the soft thumping beats on the floor were her stockinged feet padding to the chair. She liked to wear suits. Maybe now she was laying her jacket neatly across the back of the chair. Then the skirt would be unhooked and slipped down over her hips. She’d fold it carefully.

“Put out the light, Archie.”

“I like the light on. I like to look at you.”

“Please,” she said. “Please put it out.”

He knocked the glass from the table and swore drunkenly. I heard him flick the wall switch. Then a soft thud that I couldn’t identify.

Then his voice. “Come here, baby! Com’ere!”

I closed my eyes. That made it worse. I could see her walking toward him, her head back, a smile on her beautiful lips. It was dark in there, but there was white light behind my eyes.

The cheap bedsprings creaked. She was in his arms. In his arms . . .

“You’re the best,” he said. He was very drunk. Not just tight anymore, but drunk. I knew why.

“Am I the best, Archie?”

“You always were. Those other two . . .” He stopped speaking.

“What about them?”

“They’re just women.” His voice was muffled. “You’re the princess.”

“We’re all just women, Archie. All three of us.”

There were no more words after that. Just sounds. The sound of the bed, the sound of movement, the sounds from his throat. Nothing from her. She was quiet. She generally was. Not always, though. There had been a night, a long night in New York.

But he made sounds. Moans. Then he made a particular moan—but I only heard the beginning of it. My hands were gripping the edge of the bed and something merciful flooded my brain, drowning out all sound. I couldn’t have stood it otherwise. I’d have opened the door and killed them both.

After a while the roaring was gone from my head. It was over in there. It had been quick. Archie had been too full of liquor, too exhausted from months of hard riding on a trail that was downhill all the way. He had probably passed out.

All I could hear now was her dressing. She seemed to be moving around quickly, and stumbling into things. Why the hell didn’t she turn the light on? What was there to be so modest about now? Maybe she didn’t want to see herself in the bureau mirror. That might remind her of me, and of all that had happened in New York. Maybe she was as disgusted with herself as I was.

Her heels were clicking toward the door. It opened and she went out, walking fast past my door and out of the little hotel.

I moved to the window. She came out and stood in the overhead light for a moment before turning in the direction of La Cantada. She wore a two-piece green suit and a large-brimmed white hat. Her legs were as long and as beautiful as they’d always been. Her figure still stopped the beat of my heart. I loved her as much as I had before she’d gone to his room.

She passed the bar and kept going. For a moment she was swallowed by the darkness. Then two red taillights blinked on. They moved away from the curb and faded out of sight down the narrow road.

I felt suddenly empty, all life sucked out of me. I had come down here with good reason to kill Archie St. George—for what he had done to her.

But apparently I was the only one it made any difference to. She’d certainly shown me how it was on her part. Then I knew that if I wasn’t going to kill him for her, I was going to do it for myself.

I walked to the door, making a lot of noise about it, hoping that he’d hear me and be waiting with a gun in his hand. That’s how I wanted it to be now. There was nothing to be careful about anymore, nothing to go back to.

I pulled the door open. It was pitchdark and I stood for a moment in the doorway, a dark target but a target nevertheless if he had guts left for a fight.

His body took form on the bed. He was sprawled on his stomach, out cold. I went and snapped the light switch. His head was sideways on the pillow, facing me. The face was still good looking, still tough looking, even with the mouth open and the lips slack. You couldn’t take that away from Archie. He was a son of a bitch, but he was a handsome son of a bitch.

Then I found out you could take it away from him. There was a splash of red on the sheet, widening out from beneath his body even as I stared at it. I put my hand beneath his shoulder and raised him. Then I turned him completely on his back. Sticking between two ribs was a knife, a knife I’d seen once before. Its shaft pointed downward and its long thin blade had to be in his heart from an angle as sharp as that.

I pulled it loose. I lifted an end of the sheet, wiped it clean and dropped it in my inside jacket pocket. Then I looked around the room. Beneath the chair was her compact. That was the soft thud I’d heard. She’d gotten the knife out of her purse as soon as he’d turned the light out. The compact had slipped to the floor. Either she hadn’t heard it or had forgotten about it as she dressed in the dark and left. I put it beside the knife.

I spent two more minutes wiping surfaces with my handkerchief. Chair, bureau, bed, doorknob—anything she might have touched.

Then I gave them a mystery. I locked his hall door and moved the bureau in front of it. I took the key to the adjoining door—which had been on my side—and tied a length of thread from the spool in my pocket to the end of it. I passed the thread through the old-style keyhole, closed the door from my side, relocked the door with my skeleton and then pulled the key up into the lock. When it was in place, its handle on his side, I slit the slipknot in the thread.

I take nothing from the Mexican police, local or national. But they would have a good time with a dead man in a room locked securely from both sides and with no access to the second floor window.

Then I got the hell out of there. Fast.