Fury on Sunday (7 page)

Then Jane came into the bedroom carrying a box of gauze, a roll of tape and a bottle of iodine.

“This isn’t going to do much good,” she said, “not for—”

“Never mind that,” Vince said, voice shaking. “Bandage my arm. And don’t try anything funny or I’ll shoot you.”

Stan watched the big black pistol waver with Vince’s nervous movements. Now Jane was between him and Vince. Stan’s hands moved back again and touched the drawer knob.
I can’t fire if she’s in the way
. And, once again his hands jerked away from the drawer.

“You’ll have to take off your raincoat,” Jane told Vince.

Stan shuddered at the realization that Jane wasn’t afraid. At least she didn’t sound afraid. He couldn’t understand that. Was she so tired of living that death no longer held any menace for her? He felt sweat break out on his forehead. He had to get the gun. What if she did something foolish? If anything happened to her it would be the end of him, too. No matter what troubles they had, she was life to him. His fingers felt back again and touched the knob.

Vince was backing away from her. His dark hair had slipped across his forehead and some of the ebony hairs had been plastered to the skin by sweat. His eyes had a wild, frenzied glow.

“Don’t come close to me,” he warned Jane.

“How can I bandage you if I don’t come close?” Jane said.

Don’t talk to him like that!
Stan’s mind felt the stabbing of anguished fear. He tugged with a spasmodic finger contraction and one drawer edge angled out. He heard Vince say, “I mean—while I take off my coat.” He heard the anger in Vince’s voice and knew that Vince was hating her for her logic.

Now Jane had stepped back and there was a clear line between him and Vince. Stan shuddered once and tried to pull out the drawer further. It was stuck.

They stood watching Vince as he put the gun on top of the bureau.
Now, now!
Stan tugged harder.

The drawer squeaked.

Vince tensed and his hand half reached for his pistol.

“What are you doing?” he asked Stan, his dark eyes suspicious.

Stan shook his head in fright. “Nothing, nothing,” he said. “I just bumped into the table. I’m—still half asleep.”

“Don’t try anything funny,” Vince said grimly, “because I can get my gun in a second if you do try anything.”

It angered Vince that Jane didn’t show any fright. He liked it when that other girl had been paralyzed with fear. It had given him a warm feeling of power.

Well, he’d fix Jane soon enough too. She was going to die. As he thought that, he did not let himself notice the curves of her young body pushing against sheer silk.

Eyes moving from Stan to Jane, quickly, he pulled his right arm out of the raincoat. As he did the left arm tugged a little and he couldn’t stop a gasp of pain from passing his lips. Jane started forward impulsively at the sound and Vince clawed at the pistol and jerked it up.

“The next chamber has a bullet for you,” he said hurriedly.

Jane stepped back, feeling as if all the warmth in her body had drained suddenly into the floor. Her arms and legs felt numbed with cold as she stood there, whitefaced, staring at Vince in paralyzed silence. She’d never been that close to death. It was one thing to drunkenly contemplate it. It was another to have someone suddenly point a big black pistol at you.

Vince waved her back with the gun and set it down, again.

Stan had started forward, his heart pounding. Now, as he stood motionless by the bed, watching Vince try to take the coat off his left arm, he was amazed to realize that, for a moment there, he had been unafraid. Without a gun, without a knife, without anything, he was going to attack Vince. Because the gun was pointed at Jane, at his wife.

It was incredible that, after all she’d done to him, he was still instantly prepared to lay down his life for her.

But the sudden loss of fright had passed too. He was back against the table, not sure whether he should try to get the pistol or not. The sudden emergence of fear that followed blind courage left him trembling.

The arm was badly hurt. Vince tried but he couldn’t stop the whimpering entirely. His body shook terribly as he drew the raincoat down off his shoulder. The sleeve was sticking to his arm around the wound.

He had to put down the pistol again.

“I swear to God,” he said, “don’t try anything or I’ll shoot you both. I’ve already…”

No, he mustn’t tell them about Harry.

“We—” Jane started to say something but couldn’t finish. She stood there shivering.

The pistol was on the bureau again. Stan felt his body edging back involuntarily.
Stop, stop
, he muttered in his brain.
The drawer
will stick, I’ll drop the pistol, the pistol will jam, Vince will fire first
… He could think of a million arguments against trying to open the table drawer and grabbing the pistol.

Vince had clenched his teeth to stop off any cries that might come pulsing up from his throat. Like a rigid stalk of nerves he stood there struggling with the coat.

It wouldn’t come loose. Blood had glued it to his arm. He stood there helplessly, watching them as he struggled. Every time he tried to pull the dark raincoat loose, the movement sent a barb of pain up his arm and into his body, making him shudder. He felt the sobs working up through his chest. Trapped—he was trapped again. No matter what he did he couldn’t get his arm loose. Blood dribbled down across his wrist.

His eyes jerked up at them suddenly, his lips trembling.

“Help me!” he yelled furiously. “It
hurts
!”

They didn’t move. “You said you’d shoot us,” Jane said, “if we came close to…”

Vince didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. Not to be confounded and presented with the flaws in his own reason.

“I said you’d help me,” he muttered in a gasping voice. “If you don’t, I swear I’ll—”

A groan flooded from his throat. He pulled up the pistol again. It seemed to be getting heavier.
I’m weakening!
The thought sent a bolt of panic through him. No, he had to keep his strength! He had to get to Bob’s apartment! He had to save Ruth.

“Come here, damn it,” he told Jane in a low voice.

Jane started slowly toward him, eyes never leaving the pistol.

“Don’t shoot,” she said. She hated herself for begging. But she was afraid; she didn’t want to get killed.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Vince said huskily. “Not if you do what I say.”

Stan stood trembling by the bed watching his wife approach Vince. She shouldn’t go near him. What if he loses hold and shoots her? Vince was capable of violence. Stan knew what violence Vince was capable of. He’d seen it often. And so he reached back for the drawer again. He began working it out minutely, eyes fixed on Vince.

Jane stood before Vince, her eyes pale, reflecting no emotion.

“Take my coat off,” he told her, “and don’t try anything.”

“I’m not going to try anything,” she said, unable to keep the coldness from her voice because it had become the way she spoke to men.

Oh God!
Stan thought,
don’t talk to Vince like you talk to me!

His fingers fumbled at the drawer. He had to save her, he had to. Now there was a space of about three-quarters of an inch. He felt his fingers sliding in. He straightened up as Vince looked over. I mustn’t bend over so much. He tried to stare back at Vince. But Vince wasn’t interested then. Vince’s eyes were clouded with pain.

“It’s going to hurt,” Jane said in a flat, toneless voice. “Don’t point the gun at me or it’ll go off when I pull off your sleeve.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

Stan jerked spasmodically at the drawer but it still stuck.

After a moment, Vince lowered the point of the pistol. “Don’t think I can’t pull it up quick,” he threatened.

“I don’t think anything,” Jane said and put her numbed fingers on the sleeve. She wondered why she didn’t faint.

Stan watched with fear-stricken eyes as Jane started pulling at Vince’s sleeve.

Vince started to shudder without control as the white-hot spears of pain jabbed at his arm and shoulder. He cut off one whine but a second came before he could control it. He forgot the sight of Jane’s body so close to him. Everything was lost in the overwhelming pain. The room seemed to swell and contract in lurches of dark and light.
What if I black out!
his mind cried out in fear.

You’ll practice ’til you collapse if need be!

He jerked away to escape and the coat came off. His mouth opened in a choking gasp of agony and he fell against the wall, his frail chest heaving. He felt a trickling of warm blood down his arm.

Jane had backed away and was looking at Vince, the black raincoat in her shaking hands. “You—you’d better go in and sit down,” she heard herself say.

“Don’t tell me—what to—do,” he gasped.

He looked at Stan and saw Stan straighten up abruptly, a look of nervous fright on his face.

He grabbed at his pistol. “What are you trying to do?” he shouted furiously.

Stan shook his head quickly. “Nothing, nothing.”

“Get in the other room!” Vince ordered furiously, “
Now!
”

Rigid with anguished frustration Stan moved away from the table.

Vince stood against the wall as the two of them moved past and entered the living room. He blinked his eyes and shook away the sweat dripping into them. He wanted to scream out in fury because the world was conspiring against him. No matter what he did, he was just driven further from his revenge. Damn it, why hadn’t he killed Bob that day in the agency?

Before going into the living room he glanced over at the table where Stan had been. He didn’t notice the slightly open drawer. His teeth gritted and he edged into the living room.

He started for the couch. “Come over here and fix my arm,” he said, his voice hoarse and shaking. “Hurry up or I’ll…”

He didn’t finish. A cloud of blackness seemed to rush up from the floor like a great dark bird. He stumbled back with a gasp of fright and almost lost consciousness.

Then his calves bumped into the couch edge and he fell onto it. The flaring pain in his left arm drove knives of consciousness into his brain. He saw them both looking at him.

“Don’t try anything!” he cried shrilly. “I swear to—!”

No!

But he couldn’t stop it. He sat there with the tears rushing down his cheeks and his thin chest shaking with sobs. Through the quivering prisms of his tears he saw them standing there, watching him.

I’d never reach him in time
, Stan was thinking.
He’d shoot me before I could reach him. There’s no chance
.

Jane stood staring at Vince. Only slowly was the shock departing, the sudden driving bolt of it that struck when Vince had pointed the gun at her. But now the gun was not pointing at her. And Vince’s face was the twisted, frightened face of a boy. She felt sick.

What a terrible product Vince’s father had put forth into the world. What a hideous testament to his distorted ambition: to produce the mirror of himself.

She found herself remembering Saul Raden as he had been the night of Vince’s debut in Carnegie Hall.

She remembered the almost hysterical ebullience of the man—the father reflecting the glory of his son. No more than that—the father taking the credit for the glory of his son. A modern Svengali—that’s what Saul Raden had been that night—gaunt and fever-charged, forgetting the past in a distended present. Repressing the knowledge that his own hands were useless twists of bone and meat that could no longer produce the surging glory of a Beethoven sonata or the
polished effulgence of a Chopin waltz. Forgetting the auto accident that had caught him in the middle of his rising concert career, killed his bride and snapped the bones of his future like toothpicks, driving a wedge of madness into his brain.

She remembered that as she watched the son of Saul Raden sobbing on her couch, broken and mad. And she remembered the night she had tried to get Vince in bed with her.

Once again she was in the bedroom of Saul Raden’s penthouse apartment, holding Vince’s lean, hungry body against hers, both of them half-clothed, her naked breasts pressing into him, the dark room swept with hot winds of forgetfulness.

Then the light had flared, blinding them. Saul Raden stood in the doorway, a supercilious twist on his lips, not the shadow of an emotion on his face. Vince started up with a gasp, his face mottled with shame. And Saul’s voice fell over them like a spray of splintered ice.

“Dear boy, do go to the bathroom and wash off your face. You look positively bizarre.”

She remembered the fury in her, the snapping of control. She remembered shattering the whiskey bottle over the edge of the table and lunging at Vince—knowing, even in her madness, that the only way to hurt Saul was to hurt Vince’s hands.

And the whiteness, the sudden rigid pallor of Saul’s face; she remembered that. Remembered his lean, white-scarred hands clamping on her wrists, the twisted wound of his mouth shouting at her, “If you dare touch his hands, I swear to God I’ll kill you!”

And now that son of Saul Raden was looking up at her, brushing aside tears and swallowing.

And saying in a low, throaty voice, “Bandage my arm.”

She blinked and looked down at the gauze, tape and iodine still in her hands.

Without thinking she walked to the couch and sat down beside Vince. “Put it down,” she said, looking at the gun that shook in his hand. “I’m not going to take it away from you.”

Vince rested the pistol in his lap. “You’d better not try,” he warned. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

Words, words, she thought, hardly hearing what he said. She was winding gauze around his upper arm, over the wound. She didn’t tear open his shirt.

“Do you want iodine on it?” she asked, suddenly conscious of the fact that Stan was standing near the bedroom door, watching.

Vince’s throat moved. Why did she have to ask him? He hated to concentrate on extraneous things. He had to concentrate on one thing—making it crowd out all unimportant things.
Kill Bob, kill Bob, kill
…