“I stole a boat. It wasn’t easy.”
“Jack, you don’t understand. . . .”
“You bitch,” he said. “Whore. I’ll Mil you.”
“No, Jack, I can explain! Please. . . .”
He slapped her, leaning forward, his big hand slicing the air, cracking across her jaw to knock her backward. Her legs flew wide, the silky dress blew over her hips. He paid no attention to her body, but he breathed strangely. She thought frantically of screaming for help. Help was so near, really— just on the other side of the point, beyond this isolated cove. Somebody might hear her, in the villas beyond.
But she was afraid to scream.
Her face hurt where he’d slapped her, and her body felt crushed by the weight of his leap upon her. One leg ached and sent shooting pains up through her hip. She wiped sand from her cheeks. Her makeup was a mess, she thought irrationally; her hair had come down and streamed in the wind. Spume from the breakers smashing on the rocks nearby blew across the black beach.
Like a scene from hell, she thought dimly, like from the Bible that Pa used to read on the farm. And Jack Talbott was Satan, lusty and dark against the sky.
He leaned over her. “It’s the end of the line, Fran. Now listen to me. I got here on just one thing—the need to kill you. Don’t think I couldn’t or wouldn’t. I’ve done worse. Nobody beats me out like you did. You owe me a lot. We played a nice little game in Rome, by your rules, all safe and dandy for you. We never got to bed, even though you gave me hot pants. And in Geneva you cut me out again.
I waited for you, Frannie. I gave you the scrolls and went back to work to see what would happen and then I went to the chalet and waited. You never came back. I was dumb, I guess. I didn’t figure it for a couple of hours.”
“I couldn’t help it,” she whispered. She told herself to stay calm. She had never been closer to ultimate danger. Men had been angry with her before, had sworn to beat her and cut her. But she’d always been able to talk her way out. She said, in a small voice, “He made me run away. He wouldn’t let me wait, Jack. Honest. He scared me.”
“Who?”
“Cesare.”
He jeered. “Your real boy friend?”
“I used to—he was just someone I saw now and then, when Bernardo let me go to Rome alone.”
“You slept with him, huh? But not with me.”
“Jack, don’t . . . "
“Listen, I threw away everything for you, Fran. The big chance to get some real dough, to get somewhere after all the dirty, grubby years. I told you all about it. You gave me the idea in the first place. I wouldn’t have planned it this way. But you made me a little crazy, to throw everything into one big gamble like this. Does that make your dirty little heart feel good, the way you made a fool of me?”
She was afraid to answer him.
He kicked her. His big foot lashed out, caught her in the hip, flung her a little away in the dark sand. She tried to get up and he let her rise and stagger toward the water. Pain and panic drove her a few steps, until he caught her again and flung her, bonelessly, to the sand again. He fell on top of her, spread-eagling her. The hot sand seared her thigh and her cheek where he pressed her into the scratchy grains. Terror leaped wildly in her. His weight was enormous, crushing her. His breath was hot, smelled of whiskey He needed a shave, and there were red-gold bristles along his muscular jaw.
“Where are the paintings, baby?”
“I don’t have them,” she gasped.
“Who does?”
“Cesare.”
“Always Cesare, hey? Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
His knee was forced painfully between her legs. “You’re all dolled up, you were going to meet him. Do you want me to kill you right now, instead of your being sensible?”
“You’ll kill me anyway,” she said.
“Maybe not. Where is Cesare?”
“He went home.” She wanted to shriek at him, but she kept her voice at a gasping whisper. “He went there. He brought the Dwan Scrolls with him.”
“He isn’t there now. Is he going to sell them to Count Apollio?” He began to laugh, and she could feel the lurching movement of his big chest and hard stomach on her body “To your husband?”
“Yes. That was the whole idea.”
“For how much?”
“Cesare thinks he can get two or three hundred thousand from him. And then . . .”
“Then you run away with Cesare, hey?”
She was silent.
Then she said in a sudden, cold voice, “Get off me.”
“I like it here,” Jack Talbott said. “This is the most time I ever made with you, you bitch. You want to scream? Gc ahead, scream.”
Her mind felt suddenly icy and calculating. She was Frannie Smith, and she had been in tight spots before. Maybe neve) so bad as this, because there had never been a man like Jack Talbott, and she’d made a serious mistake about him but she always got out of trouble by being smart, by using the weapons she had, by manipulating men in one primal direction. She was frightened, but she couldn’t let him see that, because she knew instinctively he would enjoy her feai and it might stimulate him to do terrible things to her.
She began to curse him in alley language, stripping away all her facade of aristocratic manners so laboriously overlaid on her by Bernardo. She did nothing else. She lay under his crushing weight and cursed him, her voice rising thinly above the hammering and crashing of the nearby surf.
He was surprised. He lifted himself a little, so she could breathe a little more easily.
He frowned. “Frannie, you’re supposed to be a lady.”
“I’m just like you, you bastard,” she grated. “I’ve been on the make all my life, and I’ve got a good thing going for me now. Nobody—no punk, no crazy man like you—is going to take it away from me when I’ve almost got it made.”
“But you’ve got money. . .
“Not my own.”
“You could get a settlement from your husband.”
“You don’t know Italian law very well, do you, stupid? You don’t know anything. I thought you were like me, at first. I thought you knew the score for both of us. We both came from the same place, Jack. From the dirt, you hear? And if you let them, they keep pushing you back in it and rub your nose in it all the time. Well, I’m not going to let them do it to me again.”
He moved his head and blocked out the blinding glare of the sun. His face wore a curious expression.
“You bitch,” he whispered. “You had me fooled.”
“Yes?”
“I thought you’d really become a lady.”
She laughed, although the bruises he had inflicted hurt all through her belly and ribs. “You really did? I got the act down better than I thought.”
Then his mouth began to shake, and for a horrifying moment she thought he was going to cry, and this frightened her worse than all the other things he had done. There was a redness behind his eyes that she didn’t understand.
“I thought you were a lady,” he said again.
“I’m no better than you,” she said viciously, and her Missouri twang rasped in her voice. “A tramp on the make.” He stared silently down at her, and the look in his eyes silenced more invective from her. He was utterly still. The hot sun blazed down, the beach burned blackly, the surf hissed. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
Finally he moved, very slowly, and reached a big hand to catch his finger in the low neck of her frock and, almost lazily, with ease, he tore it, splitting the rich silk down the middle. She wore nothing underneath. It was still her pride that she needed nothing. He pushed the torn dress aside and watched her breasts lift and fall as she breathed in fright He seemed cold and objective about it.
“I’ll take mine now,” he said, in a voice so low she could hardly understand his words.
She was not afraid of men this way. But something in him made her heart lurch and her body exploded with the need to escape. She kn
ew he would hurt her beyond her ability to survive. She rolled out from under him as he straddled her took him by surprise, and scrambled to her feet in the yielding sand and twisted away toward the mountain path He jumped up and blocked her way. She spun out of reach of his spread arms and ran to the water’s edge. The white sun was a blinding wall before her. Barefooted, she splashed into the first seething wave, stumbled and fell. The water shocked her, made her torn dress cling like wet snakes to her breast! and thighs. She got up again and he caught her and threw her into the water. It ebbed, foaming around her, and the black sand ran out from under her writhing body.
“Don’t—oh, please____!”
She felt him tear at her, and a part of the wet dress flapped across her face and gagged her mouth. She coughed and choked and tried to writhe away. The next wave covered her and he pushed her head into the water and she could not breathe. She could not see him, either, but she suddenly felt his hard nakedness upon her, pinning her into the sand and water. Her lungs exploded with the need for air and she lurched up. His hand caught her breast in a cruel grip, She tried to scream, and could not. Then, like an explosion, she felt his thrust, the impact of him tearing into her, the weight of him on her stomach and flanks, driving demoniacally in his vengeful fury.
He let her breathe. Now and then the sea washed with little hissings and foamings over them both. His body plunged and tore at her. There was no pleasure in it, none of the whimpering ecstasy she always obtained from a man. For the first time, the taking was not of her choice or design. She felt humiliated, destroyed. She was aware of his gusty breathing, his limited strength and potent masculinity. She felt drowned and naked in the wet sand and the sea.
When he was finished, he stood up like a wet, sandy animal and breathed deeply, looking down at her, and then without a word he walked a few steps above the water mark on the beach and picked up his clothes. She could not remember when he had tom them off. She sat up, pulled futilely at the wet, clinging shreds of her party dress. She could not remember where she had left her shoes. The sea washed around her legs, but she felt dirty and defiled. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
“Now,” he said. “Where is Cesare?” His voice was like a darkness, spreading over her. “Where is he hiding?”
“His house is beyond the village,” she said dully.
“He’s not there. Where would he be?”
“I don’t know. But I hope he kills you.” She added with childish spite, “He’s a better man than you. He’ll kill you.”
“I doubt that. Neither will you. You’re not going to be around any more. You’re finished, Fran.”
“Now? After . . .”
“Now. In the water, baby. You drown. It’s really very simple.”
He started for her again. And now she knew she had to save herself or he would finish the destruction he had begun. For an instant she could not move as he loomed against the sky. The cove was quiet except for the brief mewing of a gull that slid across the point on a river of scalding air. Even the sea seemed quieter. His shadow loomed, his body big in gray slacks and white shirt that blinded her with reflected, reddish sunlight.
She got up and ran.
In her bare feet, she was able to splash through wet sand and shallow water where his shoes held him back. She fled to the right, unable to circle him to get to the villas beyond the point. The surf dragged at her ankles, her wet dress flapped between her legs. She heard him shout and looked over her shoulder. He was coming fast, bounding cat-like over the sand, splashing through a tidal pool. A boulder intervened and she dodged up the beach, her lungs straining with fear. She could not escape him. There was a sheer wall of rock at the other side of the cove, and a narrow crevice through which she had come only twenty minutes ago, walking in innocence, without fear.
“Fran!”
He had cut the distance in half.
“Fran, don’t run! You can’t get away!”
She scrambled up the rock and hurled herself through the crevice. The rough lava tore at her shoulder as she careened against it. She gasped, whirled around—and saw to her surprise that he was not behind her any more.
She looked farther and saw him standing alone on the beach, his arms limp at his sides. Why had he given up? He had meant to kill her, surely. For revenge, for making a fool of him, for destroying his life by getting him to steal the scrolls. And she had really done it all for Cesare. No, not for Cesare.
Just for herself.
The thought steadied her. She stood looking down at the cove where everything had just happened. Jack Talbott was walking away, not interested in her any more.
She wondered where he was going. He had already been to the Bellaria place, he’d said. And Cesare by now was talking to Bernardo, her husband, closing the deal they had arranged. Bernardo wanted the scrolls, it was all agreed, even to the truce that enabled the two men to meet today.
So it would be all right. By the time Jack Talbott caught up, she’d be safe.
Safe?
All at once a weakness took her and she sank to the rocks where she stood and covered her face with her hands. And something happened that had not happened to her since she had been a little girl, back in the mountains of Missouri.
She began to cry.
chapter seventeen
DURELL found her ten minutes later.
No one else noticed Jack Talbott clambering down the high bluff behind the villa colony on the beach. A swimming party was in progress while two radios played at once, and the laughter and shrieks, mingled with the music, seemed to crack the quiet peace of the evening. He had been sitting on the terrace of Dom Angelo’s villa, talking to the fat little Roman who alternately complained about his wife and pinched or squeezed one of the young models draped around his chair.
He had seen no sign of Talbott or Cesare, either in the village or here; so seeing the big man loom briefly against the sky and then blend with the shadows of the bluff, as he picked his way down to the cove, was like an apparition— totally unexpected.
“And Signorina Padgett?” Dom Angelo was saying. He poured his drink down the back of one of the girls, and she shrieked and jiggled appropriately. The fat man did not even
smile. “She is a lovely lady, your signorina. I miss seeing her.” “She’ll be along soon.”
“Ah. You have hidden her somewhere for yourself, eh?” Durell looked at Angelo, but the man seemed innocent. “Something like that,” he said.
He had been thinking it was time to get back to Deirdre, being satisfied that Talbott was not among these people. Yet here he was, and there was something strange and blind in the way he walked. From the terrace, the ground fell away in a series of serpentine steps to the pier and the moored yachts. There were few trees on the island, except for the imported plantings around the villas. A swimming party was going on around the pier, in the shadows cast by the headland, and Durell thought the girls there had gotten rid of even their scanty swimsuits. Their bodies flashed white and slender, and the men seemed to pursue them like dark and hairy satyrs, clumsy against the agility of the girls in the water.
Talbott looked neither to right nor left as he walked past the pier and continued on toward the fishing village. He did not see Durell sitting on the terrace above. Durell noted the man’s wet slacks, the torn shirt sleeve, a faint red scratch on Talbott’s jaw.
Dom Angelo said, “Do you know that man, signor?”
“I think so.”
“Everyone wonders about him. I understand he bribed a fisherman to bring him to Isola Filibano. But he will have to sleep on the boat that took him here—there are no quarters for strangers in this place. Is he an American?”
“Yes,” Durell said. He stood up. “Excuse me.”
The two girls curled around Dom Angelo and looked at Durell with smiling eyes. He smiled back and left, but he did not go after Talbott. He walked in the direction Jack Talbott had come from.
He found Francesca a few minutes later. She sti
ll sat in a corner of the rock on the second point beyond the cove. -The sun was setting, a monstrous and swollen red mass engorged by the shimmering sea, and there were dusky shadows among the porous rock. He would have missed her if he hadn’t heard the strange little animal sounds she made.
She did not look up as he approached He saw her tattered, bedraggled condition at once, noting her torn dress, bare feet, and tumbled hair. He guessed what had happened. He was relieved to find her alive, and when he thought of Ellen
Armbridge, back in Geneva, he wondered that Talbott had spared her.
“Francesca?” he said gently.
She did not take her hands from her face, but her body shrank against the dark niche of stone where she cowered. “Fran, it’s all right. This is Sam Durell.”
She was still for another moment. The whimperings ended. But she did not look at him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No. Yes. Go away.”
“Was it Jack Talbott?”
When she didn’t reply, he knelt beside her. The shadows thickened rapidly around them. They might have been alone on a desert island, so heavy was the pall of isolation about them. The sea muttered, the gulls cried, the wind made small sounds in the rocks and blew little curlicues of black sand around their feet. Durell took her wrists and lowered her hands from her eyes and saw her bruised face.
“I thought you were tougher than this, Fran.”
Her voice was dull. “This was different.”
“Can you get up? Can you walk?”
“Where can I go?”
“Back to your husband,” he said.
“No, I can’t go there. I’m finished there.” She gestured dismally to her tom dress. One breast was bared, and she fumbled to cover her nakedness. “How can I go back like this?”
“I’ll help you.”
“Why? You’re a cop, aren’t you? I never got any help from cops. They were always after me, back home. I hated them. Nobody ever understood how it was with me, back home.” “Did Jack understand?” he asked.
Her blue eyes widened, then narrowed. She wiped tears from her face with a child-like, swiping gesture. “I don’t know what to do. He’ll kill Cesare. I know he will. I used to be a little afraid of Cesare, you know? He was so hot-tempered, so—so Italian. Emotional. But Jack is worse. He’s wild but he’s cold, all at the same time. Cesare can’t stand up to that. I never dreamed it would be like this. And now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I think I’ve spoiled everything.”
Assignment Sorrento Siren Page 15