The Rip-Off (17 page)

No one but a pro could have had the incredible nervelessness and patience of this man. To loiter in a hospital lobby, say, until he could give me a murderous shove down its entrance steps. Or to wait in the fields adjacent to my house, until he could get me in the 'scope of his high-powered rifle. Or, missing me, to go on waiting until the house was unguarded and I was unprotected.

The pro knows that there is always a time to kill, if he will wait for it. He knows that when necessity demands disguise it must be quickly and easily used, and readily disposed of. And this man was wearing make-up.

It was a dry kind, a sort of chalk. It could be applied with a few practiced touches, removed with a brush of the sleeve. I could detect it because he had overused it, making his face a shocking mask of hideousness.

Cavernous eyes. A goblin's mouth. Repulsively exaggerated nostrils.

And why? Why the desire to scare me witless? Hatred? Why would he hate me?

There was a
click
. The gleam of a razor-sharp switchblade. He held it up for me to see-gingerly tested its murderous edge. Then looked at me grinning, relishing my stark terror.

Why? Who? Who could enjoy my torture, and why?

"Why, you son-of-a-bitch!" I exploded. "You're Manny's husband!" His eyes flickered acknowledgment, as I looked past him. "Get him, Manny!
Get him good, this time!
"

He turned his head. An impulse reaction.

The ruse bought me a split second. I vaulted over the end of the bed, and hurtled into the bathroom. Slammed and locked the door, just as he lunged against it.

A crack appeared in the inlaid paneling of the door. I called out to the guy shakily, foolishly. "I'm a historical monument, mister. This house is, I mean. You damage a historical monument, and-"

His shoulder hit the panel like a piledriver.

The crack became a split.

He swung viciously and his fist came through the wood. He fumbled blindly for the lock. I stooped, opened my mouth and chomped down on his fingers.

There was an anguished yell. He jerked his hand back so hard that I bumped my head against the door. I massaged it carefully, listening, straining my ears for some indication of what the bastard would try next.

I couldn't hear anything. Not a damned thing.

I continued to listen, and I still heard nothing.

Had he given up? No way! Not so soon. Not a professional killer with a personal interest in wasting me. Who hated me, was jealous of me, because of Manny.

"Look, you!" I called to him. "It's all over between Manny and me. I mean it!"

I paused, listening.

"You hear me out there? It's you and her from now on. She told me so herself. Maybe you think she's stalling by going to the hospital, but…"

Maybe she was, too. Maybe her earlier hospitalization had also been a stall. Or maybe just the thought of being tied up with this guy again had driven her up the wall. Because he really had her on the spot, you know?

She had tried to kill him, had done such a job on him that she believed she
had
killed him. Thus, her long convalescence after his "death." Also, after his recent reappearance, he would have discovered her painful pestering of me in the course of casing her situation. So she was vulnerable to pressure-a girl who had not only tried to kill her husband, but who had also pulled some pretty raw stuff on her lover. And the fact that her husband, the guy who was pressuring her, was on pretty shaky grounds himself would not deter him for a moment.

For he was one of those bullish, dog-in-the-manger types. The kind who would pull the temple down on his head to get a fly on the ceiling. That was the way it was. Add up everything that had happened and that was the answer.

I called out to him again, making my voice stern. I said I would give him until I counted to ten, wondering what the hell I was talking about.

Until I counted to ten… then what? But he didn’t seem very bright either, so I went right ahead.

“One-two-three-
Do you hear me? I’m counting!-feive-six-seven eight-All right! Don’t say I didn’t warn you
!-nine-un-ten!”

Silence.

Still silence.

Well, he could be gone, couldn’t he? I’d chomped down on his fingers damned hard, and he could be seriously bitten. Maybe I’d even gotten an artery, and the bastard had beat it before he bled to death.

It just about had to be something like that. I would just about have to have heard him if he still remained there.

I unlocked the door. I hesitated, then suddenly flung it open. And-

I think he must have been standing against the far wall of the bedroom. Nursing his injured hand. Measuring the distance to the bathroom door, as he readied himself for the attack upon it.

Then, at last, hurtling himself forward. Head lowered, shoulders hunched, legs churning like pistons. Rapidly gaining momentum until he hit the door with the impact of a charging bull. Rather, he
didn't
hit the door, since the door was no longer there. I had flung it open. Instead, he rocketed through the opening and hit the wall on the opposite side. And he hit it so hard that several of its tiles were loosened.

There was an explosive
spllaat!
He bounded backward, and his head struck the floor with the sound of a bursting melon.

For a moment, I thought he must be dead. Then, a kind of twitching shudder ran through his body, and I knew he was only dead to the world. Very unconscious, but very much alive.

I got busy.

I yanked off my robe, and tied him up with its cord.

I grabbed up some towels, and tied him up with them.

I tied him up with the hose of the hot-water bottles.

I tied him up with the electric light cords from the reading lamps. And some pillow cases and bedsheets. And a large roll of adhesive bandage.

That was about all I could find to tie him up with, so I let it go at that. But I still wasn't sure that it was enough. With a guy like that, you could never be sure.

I backed out of the bathroom, keeping my eye on him. I backed across the bedroom, still watching him, and out into the hallway. And then I stopped stock-still, my breath sucking in with shock.

Connie stood flattened against the wall, immediately outside my door. And lurking in the shadows at the top of the stairs, was the hulking figure of my father-in-law, Luther Bannerman.

She and Bannerman had journeyed from their homeplace together. Having a supposedly invalided daughter was a gimmick for chiseling money from me. So he had parked her before coming out to my house this afternoon, picking her up afterward. Since Kay wouldn't have volunteered any information, they assumed that she was no more than the nurse she appeared to be, one who went home at night. She had left. While they waited to make sure she would not return, they saw Manny's husband enter the house in a way that no legitimate guest would. So they followed him inside, and when he failed to do the job he had come to…

My confusion lasted only a moment. It could have taken no longer than that to sort things out, and put them in proper order. But Connie and Luther Bannerman were already edging toward me. Arms outspread to head off my escape.

I backed away. Back was the only way I could go.

"Get him, Papa!" Connie hissed. "
Now!"

I saw a shadow upon the shadows-Bannerman poising to slug me. I threw up an arm, drew my own fist back.

"You hypocrite son-of-a-bitch! You come any closer, I'll-!"

Connie slugged me in the stomach. She stiff-armed me under the chin.

I staggered backwards, and fell over the rail of the balustrade.

I went over it and down, my vision moving in a dizzying arc from beamed ceiling to panelled walls to parquet floor. I did a swift back-and-forth re-view of the floor, and decided that I was in no hurry at all to get down to it.

I had never seen such a hard-looking floor.

I was only sixty-plus feet above it-
only
!-but it seemed like sixty miles.

I had hooked my feet through the balusters when I went over the rail.

Connie was alternately pounding on them and trying to pry them loose, meanwhile hollering to her father for help.

"Do something, darn it! Slug him!"

Bannerman moved down the stairs a step or two. He leaned over the rail, striking at me. I jabbed a finger in his eye.

He cursed, and let out a howl.

Connie cursed, howled for him to do something, goddammit!

"Never mind your damn eye! Hit him, can't you?"

"Don't you cuss me, daughter!" He leaned over the rail again. "It ain't nice to cuss your papa!"

Connie yelled, "Oh, shit!" exasperatedly, and gave my foot an agonizing blow.

Her father took another swing at me, and my head seemed to explode. I heard him shout with triumph. Connie's maliciously delighted laugh.

"That almost got him, Papa. Just a little bit more, now."

"Don't you worry, daughter. Just you leave him to Papa."

He aimed another blow at me. She hit my sore foot again.

And I kicked her, and I grabbed him.

He was off-balance, leaning far out over the rail. I grabbed him by the ears, simultaneously kicking at Connie.

He came over the rail with a terrified howl, clutching my wrists for dear life. My foot went between Connie's legs, and she was propelled upward as Bannerman's weight yanked me downward.

She shrieked, one terror-filled shriek after another. Shrieking, she flattened herself against my leg and hung onto it.

She shrieked and screamed, and then yelled and howled. And one jerked one way, and the other pulled the other way. And I thought,
My God, they're going to deafen me and pull me apart at the same time
.

They were really a couple of lousy would-be murderers. But they were amateurs, of course, and even a pro can goof up. As witness, Manny's husband.

I caught a glimpse of him as I was swung back and forth. Looking more like a mummy than a man, due to the variety and number of items with which I had bound him. He came hopping through my bedroom door, very dazed and wobbly-looking. He hopped out onto the landing, lost his balance and crashed heavily into the balustrade.

It creaked and scraped ominously. The distant floor of the reception hall seemed to jump up at me a few inches, and the terrified vocalizings of the Bannermans increased.

Somehow, the mummy got to his feet again, though why I don't know. I doubt that he knew what he was doing. He got to the head of the stairs, stood looking down at them dazedly. He executed another little hop-and, of course, he fell. Went down the steps in a series of bouncing somersaults. Hitting the leg which Bannerman had just managed to hook over the rail.

The jolt almost knocked Bannerman loose from me. Naturally, I was yanked downward also, simultaneously exerting a tremendous yank upon the balustrade.

It was too much. Too damned much. It tore loose from its ancient moorings, and dropped downward. Connie skidded down my body head-first, unable to stop her plunge until she was extended almost the length of her body. Clutching her father's legs, as she clung to me by her heels.

She screamed and cursed him, hysterically. He cursed and kicked at her.

A strange calm had settled over me-the calm of the doomed. I was at once a part of things and yet outside them, and my overall view was objective.

I didn't know how the few screws and spikes which still attached the balustrade to the landing managed to stay in place. Why it didn't plunge downward, bearing us with it, into the reception hall. Moreover, I didn't seem to care. Rather, I cared
without
caring. What concerned me, in a vaguely humorous way, was the preposterous picture we must make. Connie, Bannerman and I balled together in a kind of crazy bomb, which was about to be dropped at any moment.

I waited for the weight to go off of me, the signal that we were making the final plunge. I waited, and I kept my eyes closed tight. Knowing that if I opened them, if I looked down at that floor so far below me, it would be about the last time I looked at anything.

There was so much racket from the Bannermans and the grating and screeching of the balustrade that I could hear nothing else. But suddenly the weight did go off me in two gentle yanks. There was another wait then, and I expected to hit the floor at any moment. Then, I myself was yanked, and a couple of strong arms went around me. And I was hustled effortlessly upward.

I was set down on my feet. I received a gentle bearing-down shake, then a sharp slap. I opened my eyes. Found myself on the second- floor landing, with its ruined balustrade.

Connie and Bannerman were stretched out on the floor face down, with their hands behind their heads. Manny's husband lay at the foot of the stairs in a heap.

Kay peered at me anxiously. "I'm terribly, terribly sorry, darling. Are you all right?"

"Fine," I said. Because I was alive, wasn't I, and being alive was fine, wasn't it?

To show my gratitude, I would gladly have gone down on my knees and kissed her can.

"I would have been back sooner, Britt, but a truck driver tried to pick me up. I think I broke his darned jaw."

"Fine," I said.

"Britt, honey… we don't have to say anything to Sergeant Claggett about my leaving you alone, do we? Let's not, okay?"

"Fine," I said.

"I'll think of a good story to cover. Just leave it to me."

"Fine," I said.

"You do love me, don't you, Britt? You don't think I'm awful?"

"Fine," I said.

And then I put my arms around her, and sank slowly down to my knees.

No, not to kiss her can, although I really wouldn't have minded.

It was just that I'd waited as long as I could-and I couldn't wait any longer-for something soft to faint on.