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.”
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 touch me!”
“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!
CHAPTER FIVE
I CAME INTO THE sitting room and she was on the sofa, crumpled on the sofa like a discarded plaster manikin. “How about a glass of water?” I said.
She made no sound. The best thing to do, I decided, was let her alone until she pulled herself together. You think your nerves and glands took a beating, Surratt, I thought. Think what it must have done to hers! So I took a chair in the corner of the room and waited. I was in no hurry.
It gave me time to think, and I needed some time to think. Things were happening fast. It was about time to look a-round and see just where I was.
I had an angle now. I had a woman who was scared to death of her own abnormalities, who tried to cover them up, hide them, call them by strange names. A woman like that added up to an angle that a man could really get his fingers into. That was quite a beginning, considering that this was only my second day out of prison.
But it was only the beginning. An idea had been nibbling at the edge of my brain. Dorris had mentioned that her husband had set out to dispose of his enemies.... Now there was an angle to my liking, because John Venci had been much too polished to try anything as crude as murder. There was not much satisfaction in murder, it was too sudden—no, it would have been something else, it would have been something long-drawn-out and filled with anguish, the most exquisite anguish, I was sure, that it was possible to devise.
And that, of course, would be mental anguish.
Long-drawn-out and filled with anguish, that much fit perfectly, but how would the end eventually be achieved?
Then I had it. Venci had been nothing if not logical-self-destruction would have been his aim! Suicide!
I was on the right track now, I could feel it. Great mental anguish culminated by suicide—that would have appealed to John Venci. So the only thing left was the method with which he would achieve this end. One word came to my mind automatically—Blackmail.
That was it! Venci had set out to blackmail his enemies, and that meant that he must have gone to fantastic lengths to gather evidence against them.
I grinned, feeling like a million dollars. All I had to do was get my hands on that evidence, and I had just the key to turn the lock! I had Dorris Venci! When I get through with this town, I thought, they'll think they've been hit by a hurricane!
I went over to the sofa and shook Dorris. “Okay,” I said, “you ready to talk?”
She shuddered.
“Look,” I said, “I'm not sure how we got off on this tangent, but I know one thing, it's time to get back on schedule. Go in the bathroom and wash your face or something.”
When I was a kid I used to go out on the golf course and find golf balls. Just for the hell of it I would cut the golf balls open, cut deep into them, and the tightly-wound little bands of rubber would snap and writhe like something going crazy. The golf ball would go all to pieces right there in your hand. That's what Dorris reminded me of: she looked like she would go all to pieces any minute.
But she got up and went to the bathroom. After a while she came back and I was surprised to see that she was almost normal.
I said, “You were saying something about my killing somebody...”
She glanced at me, her old icy self again. “I—I'm afraid I have changed my mind. I don't believe I need you, after all, Mr. Surratt.”
“Like hell you don't need me,” I said. “What do I have to do to convince you? You don't want to go through that act again, do you?”
That did it. She closed her eyes for a moment, her hands clenched hard, then she sank to the sofa.
“That's better,” I said. “We understand each other, Dorris; I think we understand each other perfectly. We could make a hell of a pair, you and me, but it's going to take some cooperation from both of us.”
“What is it you want?” she said tightly.
“Right now I want to get back where we left off.”
“It isn't important now.”
“It was important a few minutes ago, so it still is. You wanted somebody killed. I want to know who and I want to know why.”
She knew I wasn't kidding. She glanced at roe, then away. She put her hands in her lap and stared at them. “His name,” she said at last, “is Alex Burton.”
I whistled in surprise. “Alex B
urton, the ex-governor of the state?”
She nodded, and I said, “Well, this is very interesting. Suppose you begin at the beginning.” Then, before she could speak, I said, “Wait just a minute. I've been working on a hypothesis, and I want you to tell me if it's right.”
So I told her my idea, the way I had it figured out. Her eyes widened when I began describing the scheme of blackmail and suicide.
“How did you know that!”
“It was just a guess,” I said, “but a pretty sure one. Anyway, we can skip that part of it since I'm already familiar with it. Let's get down to the reasons for killing an ex-governor. Is he the one who killed your husband?”
She wanted to just sit there and say nothing, but she knew better than that. “... No,” she said finally. “That is, I don't know, I'm not sure.”
“Then why?”
“... Alex Burton wants to kill me.”
I thought that one over,, letting the picture take shape. “Uh-huh,” I said, “that could make sense. Your husband was turning the screw on Burton. What he wanted was the dossier that Venci had gathered on him, some irrefutable evidence that would ruin Burton for good, especially in politics. So now Burton is trying to kill you, which means that he didn't get that dossier after all, which means that you have a pretty good idea where it is, or what's in it. Is that the way it is?”
She nodded, heavily.
“Where do you live?”
Only a moment's hesitation this time. She was beginning to come around, she was beginning to realize that I meant business. “208 Hunters Drive,” she said flatly.
I gave the cab dispatcher the address and hung up. “Mrs. Venci,” I said, “you can stop worrying about Alex Burton; I know how to take care of bastards like him. But I think we ought to have an understanding—there's going to be a fee.”
She had recovered from her attack of female pride. Given time to think it over, even Dorris Venci could see that her chances of living were practically nil if Alex Burton wanted her dead—that is, unless I took care of Burton first. She said, “AH right... I'm willing to pay.”
Never Say No To A Killer Page 3