by Day Keene
Then he thought of the cottage at Lake Popolo. During the summer just past, not content with moving from Fifteenth Street to Stamford, May had insisted on renting a cottage on a lake for two weeks so Alice and Jimmy could get even closer to nature.
The two week-ends he’d spent at the cottage had been the most miserable four days of his life. The sleeping facilities had been, to say the least, inadequate. The meals cooked over a kerosene stove had been worse than usual. Alice had used the pretext of changing from her play clothes to a bathing suit to expose herself to him on every occasion that May was out of the cabin. The only sanitary provisions had been a small building at the end of a weed-grown path. And during his two week-ends at the cottage not only had hordes of mosquitoes found their way through rusted screens but something Jimmy claimed was a hoot owl kept him awake all night.
Brady thought on. On the other hand, the cottage was in the loneliest and most secluded spot he’d ever seen. It was less than a hundred miles from New York but once you reached the cove of the lake on which it stood, you might have dropped back in time a hundred years.
There was no resort area, no store. It couldn’t be reached by bus or train. The only access to the cottage was a rutted county road. True there were two dozen or more other cottages on the lake but none of the owners lived in them after Labor Day. In fact, the day he and May and the children left, the farmer who owned the cottages had driven up in a truck to take in the swimming float and board up the doors and windows for the winter. He’d never thought of it before. He’d had no reason to. But the cottage would make an ideal hideout. Perhaps he and Miss Larson could hole up in it for a couple of days, until he could figure out what to do. It should be a fairly easy job to pry a few boards off the windows.
He glanced sideways at the girl beside him. “Do you trust me?”
Linda Lou was practical. “I don’t seem to have much choice. Why?”
Brady told her. “I’ve just thought of a place where neither Dix nor—what did you say that other hood’s name is?”
“Morgan.”
“Where neither Dix nor Morgan nor the police can find us. A cottage on a lake.”
“How do you know it will be safe?”
“Because no one lives thereafter Labor Day. The lake is deserted. This summer, I rented it for the last two weeks in August.”
“You lived there alone?”
“No. With my wife and two children.”
“Then there is a Mrs. Brady.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?’
“Let’s just say we don’t get along.” Brady glanced in his rear vision mirror at the headlights of the cars behind them. “Well—?’
Linda Lou folded her hands in her lap. She knew what would probably happen in the cottage. Still, even that was preferable to taking another beating and then winding up being killed. “It’s all right, I guess,” she said. “At least it will be better than just riding around in the rain.”
“Good,” Brady said. “Good.”
He crossed the George Washington Bridge and turned north on U.S. Highway 9W. He wasn’t too familiar with this side of the river. He’d only driven the highway the two times he’d stayed at the cottage.
Brady glanced sideways at the girl again. Even with her face punched out of shape by a pair of sadistic killers, she was very attractive. She had a certain youthful freshness and an aura of vitality.
“If I haven’t said it before,” he said, “thank you for saving my life.”
Linda Lou clasped and unclasped her hands. “It was the only thing I could do. After watching them do what they did to Mr. Scaffidi.”
Brady wondered how a girl like her had ever become tied in with a man like Dix. He asked her.
“I came a far piece for that,” the girl said wryly. Her pride forced her to add, “But if you mean am I his girl, the answer is no. He wanted me to be but wouldn’t. All I was doing was carrying the money. And I didn’t want to do that.”
The highway was slick with rain and unfamiliar. Brady let the matter drop for the time and paid attention to his driving. They rode in silence for miles without a stop. Fortunately the gas tank had been almost full when they’d left the city. If possible, Brady wanted to reach the cabin without stopping for gasoline. To stop would mean leaving a trail. And whatever Dix was, he was big time. A man didn’t rise into the upper echelons of any organization by being dumb.
When he finally reached the turn-off he drove past it and had to make a U turn and drive back.
“How far now?” Linda Lou asked him.
Brady estimated the distance. “Perhaps eight or nine miles.”
The state road he’d turned off on was surfaced. The road leading back through the hills wasn’t. When he reached it it was more of a small river than a road, the water running tire deep. Only the fact that a good share of it ran across surface shale made it passable. Twice he had to back up and make a run for it to pass low spots. Then just when he could see the rain dimpling the surface of the lake, on the far side of the lake from the cottage, the car bogged down completely.
It was senseless to spend the night in the car with the cottage so near. “It looks like we’ll have to walk the rest of the way,” Brady said. “Then I’ll come back in the morning and see what I can do about getting the car unstuck.”
“Whatever you say,” Linda Lou said.
She tried to limp through the uneven muck and couldn’t. Her twisted ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. Brady solved the problem by carrying her and by the time they reached the cottage both of them were as wet as if they’d swum the lake.
One thing was in their favor. It was as easy to pry off the boards from the door as Brady had thought it would be. Once he’d pried off the boards he carried Linda Lou inside and sat her on one of the built-in bunks and looked for and found a coal oil lamp.
The cabin was cold and smelled musty. Its one good feature was a small fireplace. There was some dry wood in the shed. Brady found an old newspaper and started a fire. As soon as the fire was burning well and beginning to throw out some heat he took two blankets from a shelf in the closet and gave one of them to Linda Lou.
“You’d better get those wet things off and wrap up in this. We might as well have stayed in New York and let Mr. Dix kill us as to die of pneumonia. Meanwhile I’ll light the stove and put some water on to heat. And when it’s hot, I’ll work on your ankle.”
Linda Lou undressed as modestly as she could and sat on a straight-backed chair facing the fire with the blanket draped around her bare shoulders. As the cottage began to warm an almost feral smell replaced the mustiness. From the corner of her eyes she could see Mr. Brady undressing in front of the meager heat from the yellow-blue rings of the kerosene stove. He was a big man, powerfully built, with good muscles. If she had to spend the night with a man she was glad it wasn’t someone like the middle-aged salesman from Atlanta or the nasty little hotel clerk. At least Mr. Brady wouldn’t expect “extras.”
The aroma of boiling coffee drowned out the feral smell and a few minutes later Brady crossed the room to her with a steaming tin cup in his hand. “I found half a can of coffee on the shelf over the stove. Also a small stock of canned goods. At least enough to last us for three days.”
Linda Lou was grateful. “Thank you.” She’d never tasted better coffee. Mr. Brady was a thoughtful man. He’d given her a cup of coffee before he started to wallow her. If he was any of the other three men she’d known, she’d he flat on her back by now.
She watched Mr. Brady walk back to the stove, having trouble with his blanket. From time to time it slipped and gaped open and she could tell he was as embarrassed as she was about it. When he returned he was bringing a large kettle of warm water.
Brady put the kettle on the floor and knelt in front of Linda Lou and examined her swollen ankle. When he’d finished, he said frankly, “I could feel around for an hour and not be able to tell a thing. But if anything’s broken, it’s
one of the very small bones.” He put the girl’s ankle in the water. “If it’s just a strain the hot water should help. And in the morning when I go back to the car I’ll look in the glove compartment. I think binding it would help and sometimes rented cars have first-aid kits.”
Linda Lou thanked him. She liked sitting in front of the fire with him. She liked Mr. Brady. She knew she could grow to like him very much. She wished just once before she died it wouldn’t have to be like this. She hoped just once a man would want her because he liked her and not just because she was a woman.
From time to time Brady added wood to the fire but they didn’t speak again until he decided the water had cooled to a point where it wouldn’t help her ankle any further. Then he lifted Linda Lou from the chair and carried her to one of the bunks. He sat down and looked at her bruised face.
“They gave you a rough time, didn’t they?”
Linda Lou’s indignation overcame her embarrassment at what she was sure was about to happen. “They damn near killed me.”
Her slim body tensed as she waited for him to slide his hand under the blanket and begin the preliminary squeezing and feeling she’d learned to expect from men. Her head ached. Her ankle still hurt. She’d never been so tired nor so frightened. She wanted to get it over with so she could go to sleep and pretend for a few hours that everything was all right.
To hurry him along, she threw back the blanket. “All right. Let’s get it over with. If I have to, I have to.”
“A real rough time,” Brady repeated.
He sat studying the girl’s body in the yellow light of the oil lamp. It was a beautiful body, well-proportioned and exquisitely joined. But there was a nasty bruise on her stomach, another on her inner thigh and half a dozen smaller ones, all beginning to color. He touched the bruise on her stomach. “Who did that?”
“Daly.”
“He’s the one I killed?”
“Yes “
“I’m glad.”
Linda Lou waited for him to take her. When he didn’t, she said, impatiently, “Well—?”
Brady fingered the bruise on her thigh. “You want me to make love to you?”
“I can’t stop you.”
“But you’d rather I wouldn’t?”
“Yes.”
“As you said, if you have to, you have to. And you just want to get done with it?”
“Yes.”
Brady covered her with the blanket. “In that case, let’s skip it.”
Linda Lou couldn’t believe it. “You mean you don’t want me?”
Brady was as honest with her as he was trying to be with himself. This had nothing to do with morals. It simply wasn’t the time or place. Because of him the girl had been beaten half to death. She still might die because of him. She’d seen enough of the worst side of men. It was time someone gave her a break.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t that. Of course I want you. After what’s been happening during these last few days and nights and now after looking at you, I can’t think of anything nicer. But I can do without. I intend to.” He continued to be honest with her. “But if by any chance we should happen to get out of this mess, I’d like a rain check.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some other time.”
“Just because I’m pretty and I’m a girl?”
Brady considered his answer. “No.” He meant it. He liked Linda Lou. He liked her very much. She was different. She was naive and knowledgeable at the same time. More important, she was basically honest. If she loved a man there would be no meal ticket business about it. “No,” he repeated. “Because I like you and I’d like to know you better.” He smiled to relieve the tension. “You can believe this or not, Miss Larson, but the first time I saw you you were walking past a bar on Forty-second Street where I was having a drink. You were wearing your red plastic raincoat and probably looking for the cab that started this whole darn thing. And the moment I saw you, without even knowing your name or who you were, I said to myself, ‘Now there’s the kind of a girl I should have married.’”
Linda Lou was pleased. “You didn’t.”
Still smiling, Brady raised his right palm shoulder high. “Scout’s honor.”
Linda Lou studied his face. He meant it. For as far back as she could remember, this was the only man she’d ever met who’d really been kind to her. Other men had given her rides and presents and sweet-talked her, but they all had had one thing on their minds. None of them had thought of her in terms of marriage.
Quick tears formed in her eyes and Brady said, “Here, now. None of that. It’s wet enough outside. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“It’s all right,” Linda Lou assured him. She tried to explain why she felt the way she did and once she’d started to talk she couldn’t stop. It had been bottled up in her so long. She had to tell someone. She told him the whole sordid mess from the night she’d driven away from Della’s with Silk to the afternoon when Mr. Dix had sent word he wanted to see her in his office.
It was warm and still in the cabin when she finished. The only sounds were the drum of the rain on the roof and the scrape of a wind-blown tree branch on the shingles.
Brady wished he knew what to say to the girl. He wished he could tell her that now she’d met him everything was going to be all right. He couldn’t. For all be knew, somewhere out there in the night, in spite of all the care he’d taken, now, right this minute, Mr. Dix and Morgan might be trailing them to the cottage. And if they were, he and Linda Lou were dead. Not even giving the money back would save them now. He had killed one of Dix’s men. Linda Lou was a witness to Mike Scaffidi’s murder. And even if Dix wasn’t successful in trailing them here, where could they go? On what?
He made certain the door was bolted and put more wood on the fire. Then, in an attempt to keep Linda Lou from thinking about what she’d just confided in him, he sat back on the edge of the bunk and told her about May and Alice and his dreams and aspirations and of the places he’d lived in as a boy and had once hoped to revisit. The fire had burned low when he was done and dawn wasn’t far away.
Brady kissed Linda Lou’s cheek. “Now we’d better get some sleep.” He stood up and blew out the lamp and crossed the room and lay down on the other bunk. “Good night.”
The ache in her ankle had moved to her breasts. Her flesh felt hot. Her thighs felt heavy. She didn’t want to be alone. Now that Mr. Brady hadn’t, she wished he had. With Mr. Brady it might be different. With Mr. Brady the heretofore violation of her privacy might take on meaning and purpose. She suddenly wanted him to enjoy her. She wanted to know him. She wanted him to like her. She waited a long moment, then called softly, “Jim—”
“Yes—?” Brady asked.
“Please come back.”
“You know what will happen if I do.”
“I know.”
Brady’s preliminary love play was brief and actively intimate but gentle. Neither of them spoke again but for the first time since she’d given herself to a man, Linda Lou gasped with pleasure. For the first time she didn’t feel ashamed or dirty. This, after all, was woman’s major function. She enjoyed feeling complete, knowing she was giving pleasure.
She felt as if she was floating in space and the concerned voice speaking to her seemed faint and far away.
“Are you all right?” Brady asked her.
Linda Lou was too embarrassed to tell him the truth. No man would believe a nineteen-year-old girl could be so completely ignorant of the normal functions of her body, especially a girl who’d admitted she’d permitted three other men to know her.
“Oh, yes,” she told him. “Oh, yes.”
She was glad it had happened with him. She was glad she hadn’t known what the relation between a man and a woman could mean. If she had, she might not be here. She might not have been so reluctant to help Della in the back room.
SIXTEEN
AN EARLY RISING squirrel, or so he thought at the time, awakened Brady by scampering
over the wooden shingles of the cottage in pursuit of a rolling acorn.
He opened his eyes. The rain had stopped. Bright sunlight was feeling its way into the room through the crack around the door and in through the cracks between the boards of the boarded-up windows. Even with the fire in the fireplace dead, it was overwarm in the cottage.
He lifted his left wrist gently so as not to disturb the sleeping girl whose head was pillowed on his chest. His watch said it was almost noon.
He looked at Linda Lou, then brushed her cheek with his lips. It was small wonder he’d slept so late. It had been long after dawn when they’d finally called it a night. The girl was an enigma. She’d been like a child with a new toy, insatiable. Child and woman in one, she was completely delightful. If he could get them out of this mess they were in he intended to do what he could to make their new-found relationship permanent. For the first time in his life, after spending a night with a demanding woman, instead of feeling emotionally and physically depleted, he felt strengthened. Instead of meekly riding the 8:01 or 8:25 he wanted to go out and slay dragons and bring them back and lay them at her feet.
Moving an inch at a time so he wouldn’t awaken her, he slipped his arm from under her shoulders and stood up. Quietly he lighted the kerosene stove and made coffee. Then while he waited for it to boil he unbolted the door and stood in the doorway looking at the lake. Its surface was blue and placid. There was a smell of pine and wet, fertile earth. The sun, directly overhead, was hot enough for it to be July. From where he stood he could see the roofs of three cottages on the other side of the lake. No smoke was issuing from their chimneys. There was no sound but the twittering of the birds in the trees and the scolding and scampering of the squirrels.
Living in the country, he decided, could be wonderful. It all depended on the person with whom you were living.
He’d been right about one thing. None of the summer people lived on the lake after Labor Day. It was as if he and Linda Lou were in a world of their own. He turned and looked at her. If there was anything more beautiful than the unclothed form of a sleeping woman he’d never seen it. Narrow as the bunk had been it had been wide enough for two. He meant to keep it that way. True, he and Linda Lou had started at the wrong end of courtship. They’d started with the end result instead of the preliminary overtures. A man was supposed to woo a woman, bring her flowers and candy and put a ring on her finger before they went to bed. But he’d traveled that route with May. And in the night just past he’d known more pure pleasure than he had in all his five years of marriage.