The Vengeful Virgin (Hard Case Crime)

by Gil Brewer

  “You knew this all the time, and you let me act like I did,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  She really meant it.

  “Listen,” I said. “We’re not going to have time to talk now. First off, it’ll take them a little time to find out about this car....”

  “That girl saw it.”

  “I know, I know. Don’t you think I realize that? It can’t be helped. I was planning to trade it off for still another. We can’t do it, now. If we steal one, that won’t help.”

  “What will we do? Where will we go?”

  “Easy, now. Keep hold of yourself. There’s only us, you know? We can’t take a bus, a train, or a plane. They’ll be watching them. They’ll sure as hell set up road blocks before long. They’ve probably already contacted the bank. They’re at your place. They’re looking for us right now. The one chance we have got is this car, until they find out about it.”

  “Yes, Jack.”

  I headed across town toward the junkyard district.

  “They’ll have the license number before the day’s out. But there are a lot of cars exactly like this one on the highways, everywhere. I’m going to swipe a plate off a wrecked car in a junkyard, then we’ll scram.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far. We’ll take back roads, head north maybe fifty or seventy miles, and rent a place. Anything. A cabin someplace. Then when everything cools down, we’ll take off. The big mistake would be to try and make it now. We’d never make it, Shirley.”

  She just looked at me.

  I made it to a junkyard I knew of, where it was self-service. I parked down the street, told her to lie on the seat, out of sight. Then I went over to the yard, and told the man I was looking for an old Stromberg carburetor to fix up a hot rod I was building for my kid. He said to have a look around.

  “I’ll need pliers and a screw driver.”

  He grumbled, and loaned me the tools.

  I found a plate for this year, got that off the car it was on, and slid it under my shirt and belt, at my back. Then I located a carb, and tore it off fast.

  “You’ll need a kit,” he said. “This is all shot to hell.”

  “I know it.”

  “I sell kits.”

  “Well, I figured...”

  “It’s no good without you fix it, pal.”

  “Okay. I’ll take the kit, then.”

  I paid for the stuff, and went back to the car. She was lying on the seat, looking like a scared rabbit.

  I was beginning to feel fine. We had a good chance.

  We drove out of town, taking the back routes, and stopped the first chance so I could change the plates. Shirley sat in the car, tuning the radio. She’d been quiet ever since we left town, and that bothered me a little. I buried the plate that was on the car. Then I heard her call.

  “Jack. Hurry!”

  Well, I went over there, and it was on the radio. She picked up the tail end of a news flash, but even at that, it was pretty explicit.

  They were holding Henry Lamphier in a jail cell for his own protection. He had sworn to kill us both. The police were having a bad time with him. We were suspected of murdering both Victor Spondell and Mayda Lamphier, and they had it all straight down the line, even though they claimed they weren’t positive. They theorized Mayda Lamphier had somehow surprised us in the act of letting Victor die, and we’d had to do away with her. They uncovered everything. The pad with the list of stuff at my place, Miraglia’s name, everybody’s name, all the gimmicks. It added up. I don’t know, maybe there was something inevitable about it, because they’d even dug up the bloody blanket.

  A young cop got credit for that. He had put himself in what he figured was my place, since the Medical Examiner had claimed there would have been a lot of blood, and we had probably wrapped Mayda in something.

  He walked away from the spot by the canal, down the road, and turned off where he thought we might have buried whatever it was, and dug up the bloody blanket.

  They had checked with the bank at three minutes to ten. So they’d missed Shirley by maybe seconds.

  There was nothing on the car as yet.

  We were “love killers.” We had held “wild orgies” under the very eyes of the pitiful dying man. We were “sex-crazed thieves and lustful murderers.” We were “passion-bold.” I could see all the fact crime writers streaming toward the house that they called the “love nest death house,” and stuff like that.

  Behind it all was Anthony Miraglia. He told the police something had made him suspicious. He berated himself for not acting sooner. He had discovered the original condenser I’d taken out of the intercom unit under Victor Spondell’s eyes, claiming it was bad. I remembered leaving it on the windowsill. I’d had to take it out with Victor watching.

  He had taken the condenser home to his boy, who was interested in building radio kits. Then he looked at it, checked it, and found it flawless. From there on out, one thing had led to another, Doctor Miraglia told them. “Victor Spondell was a strong man, and I admired his courage in view of the fact that he knew he would die. He was my friend.”

  They said we would never get away.

  Something began to go out of me. I had to keep looking at that white bag with the money in it, to reassure myself. It helped.

  “It looks bad, Jack.”

  “Looks and is are two different things,” I said. “Keep your chin up, Shirley.”

  We stopped off in Tampa, got some sandwiches and cokes, and took off.

  By late afternoon we had rented a cabin on a river, in the woods. We were “newlyweds.” The nearest store and gas station stood at a country intersection about a mile away, called Wilke’s Corners.

  The cabin was an old place, but pretty well kept up. There were three rooms. A small kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room. The furniture was beat.

  The cabin was on a small hill. You could look out the front windows and see the dirt road winding down through pine trees, away from the river. On the other side, you could see the river, and you could hear it, pulsing darkly against the shore. There were cypresses and vines along the river, and the water was black.

  We’d had to ask about a place. I asked in a bar attached to the grocery store at Wilke’s Corners. A farmer said he had a place, and we rented it sight unseen.

  Shirley had waited in the car. But she was still talking about how the man’s face looked when I paid him the rent for the first two weeks.

  “Well,” she said, standing in the living room. “We’re here.”

  “Yeah. It’s not bad.”

  She moved toward me. “It’s wonderful, Jack. We’re married. We’re newlyweds. I like it that way.”

  “Sure. So do I.”

  “Kiss me.”

  I kissed her. I had wanted to bring in the stuff from the car. I didn’t get to it right then. I was worried about all they’d said over the radio. I was worried about the guy we’d had to rent the cabin from. I was worried and scared about everything, but nothing seemed to bother Shirley from the moment she entered that cabin door.

  She said, “There’s nobody here, but us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nobody to see us, or watch us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just us. All alone. The way it should be.”

  I held her tightly. It was good this way. You could hear the river and the wind in the pines and it was getting on toward the first part of twilight. Some of the worry fell away from me. The place was warm with our coming. We stood there in the middle of the living room, holding each other, amid the old smells of wood and old fires, and the air was close, but maybe that helped. It was different. There was a kind of freedom in it, and this freedom slowly worked on you, and all the bad fell away.

  “We don’t have to hurry, or anything,” she said. “We can take our time, and do anything we want.” She said it in a close whisper, and there was strong excitement behind the words.

  I rubbed my hands up and down her body, feeling
the shape of her, and pulling her against me. I kissed her lips and her face, and we stood there holding it like that.

  She pressed her hands against my chest, and tipped her head up to me, her lips parted, her eyes shining big and round. “Jack.” she said. “Do you really know how much I love you?”

  I kissed her on the mouth and she moaned softly.

  “Jack?” Her eyes had the devil in them now. “Let’s just take off all our clothes and be naked together. Not a stitch.”

  “Hadn’t we better get the stuff in from the car?”

  I kept thinking of that money out there in the car.

  “It can wait.” She was already starting to unbutton her dress between her breasts, watching me. She paused. “Are you sorry about anything, Jack? I mean, about what we’ve done?”

  “No.”

  “Neither am I.”

  We moved into the bedroom. I yanked the spread back and looked at the bed. It was made up and it looked clean. I saw no bugs or insects in the room. The guy I’d rented the cabin from said he kept it for fishermen mostly, but that it was always ready to be rented to anyone who wanted it.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a fireplace in the living room. Why not start a fire, and be real cozy?”

  “It’s pretty warm for a fire.”

  “It’ll be chilly tonight.”

  I looked at her and grinned. “I’ll bet.”

  She pouted. “Please. I’d like a fire. We could have a fire, and close all the windows and doors, and be cozy in the firelight.”

  “Now?”

  She breathed it. “Yes. Now. It’ll be better. I promise. We don’t have to hurry.”

  I went on outside. I started looking for wood, but somehow I ended up over by the car. I took her bags inside, and then came back and got the shiny white leather suitcase. I got that chill on the back of my neck again. I took it inside. She was in the bedroom. I set the suitcase on a chair, and stood there staring at it.

  She came out of the bedroom, carrying a big pile of blankets.

  “You get the wood?”

  “I will.

  She frowned as she saw me staring at the money bag.

  “Come on, Jack.”

  I went out. I didn’t even ask her what the blankets were for. I got some wood together, mostly pine, so it would burn easily, and went back inside again. I was beginning to feel tired. We were remote from everything, and I couldn’t fasten on to what we had done. We were just here, that’s all.

  Then I’d think of that money. The chill.

  She had the blankets spread all around the floor in front of the fireplace. I dumped the wood in a box, and set the fire with some old newspapers underneath the wood. It caught quickly, and the room became a chimera of fire and shadow. It changed the cabin. She was right. It was good.

  She still had her clothes on, with some of the buttons of her dress undone, the round thrust of her breasts showing.

  “We forgot to get anything in to eat.”

  “There are some cans in the kitchen,” she said. “Not much, but it’ll do. Don’t you think?”

  “Sure.”

  She moved into my arms, and it started. We didn’t get our clothes off right then, either. It was as if she wanted to devour me. I’d never seen anything like it. She was wild. It got me, and we were both swept up in it, a kind of orgy of flesh. And, like always, the pallor of her body seemed to make it stronger somehow. She moaned. She didn’t hold back. I saw that she had been holding back the other times. She talked wildly, yelled, and writhed like the flames of hell.

  “I won’t worry about that Grace anymore,” she said once. Then another time, “This! This is for the money. For the money. This!”

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  It was dark and the fire had died down to red embers before we rested much. Then we just lay there and she had been right about everything. It was good with the fire. The cabin was warm, and it smelled of her perfume, mingled with burning pine.

  “You’re a mess,” I said.

  “You made me that way.”

  Her aqua dress was all roped up around her middle, and her hair was snarled, and she just lay there, like some glorious whore, glorifying her whoring, happy as hell.

  I went over and put some more wood on the fire.

  When I turned around, she was naked, lying there on the blankets.

  “Get the money, Jack.”

  I didn’t say anything. I turned like a hound on the scent. I got the money bag and brought it back.

  “Where’s your purse?”

  “Over there on the table.”

  I got the key from her purse and unlocked the white leather bag.

  “Pour it out,” she said. “Here.” She slapped the blanket between us.

  I opened the white bag and turned it upside down. The money fell there on the blanket between us, piling up and piling up. I threw the small suitcase across the room, and knelt looking at it.

  “It kind of makes you crazy,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Undress,” she said. “Like me. Take your shirt off.”

  I undressed all the way to make her happy, then we lay there, and looked at the money. The firelight was high now, and the flames danced across the ceiling and played like thin wicked fingers across the pile of money.

  “Let’s take all the paper bands off,” she said. “It’ll look like more. Jesus, Jack—just look at it, will you?”

  I felt a little crazy, right then. I couldn’t help it. Over three hundred thousand dollars, and all mine.

  Right there on the floor. I could touch it, and run my hands through it.

  “Fun,” she said.

  “Yeah.” My throat was dry.

  I looked at her. Her breasts stood out and she sort of sprawled around, stripping the paper bands off packets of the money. There were all denominations. Tens. Twenties. Fifties. Hundreds. There were lots more hundreds than anything else. I helped her. She was a lot steadier than I was. I was sweating to beat the band, stripping those packets.

  Then we had this pile of money on the blanket. I couldn’t say anything. I knew I would have yelled, or something.

  “Just think,” she said. “It was all mine. Only now it’s ours. I mean, if I hadn’t met you, Jack, I’d still be back there feeding Victor his oxygen and secretly burning up inside.”

  “But it’s not that way, so don’t think of it.”

  Shirley knelt by the money. She reached into it with both fists and tossed it into the air, and watched it flutter down.

  “Think of all the things we can do,” she said.

  “I am.”

  I lay there, watching her. She was beautiful, Christ, they didn’t come any more beautiful than Shirley Angela. Kneeling there with that big pile of money, and the firelight playing across her body, breasts, hip and thigh, her flesh sheened a little with perspiration from the heat so it mirrored the flames—there was never anything like it.

  She saw the way I looked at her and laughed happily. She stood up, swaying her hips and shoulders in the firelight, then went into a little dance, playing her body against the fire and the shadows.

  She came by me and I tripped her. I grabbed her and kissed her and she was hot all over.

  “Jack,” she said. “I’m so happy. I love you so!”

  “Prove it.”

  She eyed me. “With pleasure!”

  We rolled around in that money, loving it up, like a couple of swine, and this time there was nothing slow about anything. It was like that time on the kitchen floor, at her house. Only it was better. It was the best.

  After a while, we went into the kitchen, and opened a couple cans of stuff. We ate that, and I made some coffee.

  “We’ll have to get some groceries,” I said.

  “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

  “I don’t know.” And I didn’t, then.

  Fifteen

  Next day it was the same.

&nb
sp; About noon, it was, we packed the money away in the suitcase. We were out of cigarettes, so I said I’d drive over to Wilke’s Corners.

  “Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  I went over and bought groceries, and cigarettes, and two bottles of whisky. Everything went smoothly. I listened to the car radio, but I didn’t get anything about us. It was almost too quiet.

  When I got back, Shirley had found a radio under the bed and she was listening to it in the living room. She was wearing a red housecoat, and that was all.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me.

  “Hey, there,” I said.

  She looked up at me and smiled hesitantly. I went into the kitchen and put the stuff away, and poured a drink.

  “You want a drink?” I said.

  “No.”

  I didn’t like the way she said that. She was acting strange.

  Then she said. “Did it go all right?”

  “It went perfect.”

  “That’s good.”

  “No questions, nothing. I didn’t talk to anybody but the grocery clerk, and the guy over at the bar. There was nobody in the bar.”

  “Oh.”

  “Something the matter?”

  “Oh, no.”

  I drank the drink. I had another. Then another. I felt it right away, and it felt good, so I had another. I went in and sat down in a chair across from where she was on the couch. She flipped the radio off and looked at me. We watched each other.

  “Happy?” she said.

  “Sure. You?”

  She looked at her lap, then at me, then she nodded.

  “Isn’t much to do around here,” I said.

  She turned her head away.

  “You know what I mean,” I said quickly. “Only we can’t take off. It’s a shame, in a way. All that dough, and no place to spend it. Wouldn’t you like to spend it?”

  “Anything you like is all right with me.”

  “Yeah, but doesn’t it stir you up?”

  “Not particularly. I’ve been awfully happy here, Jack.”

  “Well, I am, too.”

  We didn’t speak for a time.

  “You hungry?” I said.