Case of Lucy Bending (50 page)

"No, no, and no!" Empt cried, clenching a fist. "Listen, you came to us; we didn't go to you. And you sang us a pretty song. You had the recommendations and all, so we
trusted
you, for God's sake. Now you want to cut us off at the knees. Turk, how do you feel about this?"

"It sucks," Bending said, his face flushed. He turned to the silent Jimmy Stone. "I don't know about the others, but I had to scramble to come up with my share. I sold some bonds and took a bath. I figured it was worth it because your numbers looked so good. Now you're telling us it was all a mistake because some wet-brained bookkeeper says you should be like Standard Oil or Exxon. That's crazy! Bill, what do you think?"

"Uh ... a very unfortunate turn of events," said Holloway.

"Let me get this straight," Empt said furiously, his voice harsher than ever. "You're going to buy us out, pay us what we put in, throw us a couple of extra bucks for our trouble, pat us on the head and send us on our way. Is that about it?"

"We're taking over the processing end of the business," Rocco Santangelo said, face expressionless. "Yes. That's it."

"Bull
shit
it is!" Empt said. "You thirtk we're just going to lay down and roll over? No
way!
What the hell kind of men are you? You look us up, jerk us off, and now it's goodbye, Charlie? In a pig's ass it is! You made a commitment to us. An oral contract. And by God, you're going to stick to it."

"Damned right," Bending said. "What kind of shit is this? You expect us to take it without making one hell of a ruckus? So maybe we've got nothing on paper. But we can sure cause

hell of a stink. Is that what you want? Big headlines: Torn Kings Sued by Processors.' Is that really what you want?"

Jimmy Stone leaned forward from the shadows. His voice
^w
as low, uninfected, difficult to hear.

No," he said, "we don't want that. And I don't think you do either. All three of you are responsible businessmen. Good reputations in the community. Do you really want the courts and newspapers to know that you planned to make a lot of money by turning out copies of
Teenage HoneypotsT'

There was silence a moment. Broken when Luther Empt rose suddenly to his feet and began to stalk angrily about the room.

. "I don't give a good goddamn!" he shouted. "I've worked too long and too hard to let a bunch of creeps fuck me in the ass. Screw my reputation as a responsible businessman. I'm going to my lawyer first thing tomorrow morning. And if he says there's nothing I can do, I'll burn down the factory. I'll blow it up before I let you bums take over."

"I'm with you, Luther," Bending said.

Bill Holloway was silent.

"Are you threatening us?" Jimmy Stone asked quietly.

"Goddamned right I'm threatening you!" Empt yelled. "You stick to your original agreement or we'll give it to you like you're trying to give it to us."

"I don't think we're doing anything so bad," Jimmy Stone said mildly. "Plans sometimes change. I'm sure all you gentlemen have had to adjust when things didn't turn out the way you thought they would. You're getting your investment back. We can come to some friendly agreement on payment for your time and trouble. So what's the need to scream and call us creeps and bums and say you're going to do this and you're going to do that?"

"You talked big profits," Bending accused him, "just to get that factory built. To use our money and Luther's know-how. Now that it's built and ready to go, you decide you don't need us."

"No," Stone said, shaking his head, "that's not true. When we started this with you gentlemen, we were honest and sincere. We really expected things to go smoothly. The numbers we gave you were right. But now things have changed and we've got to change along with them." He shrugged.

"No way am I going to sit still for this," Luther Empt told him. "What do you think—we're a bunch of patsies? You keep calling us gentlemen. I'll show you what gentlemen can do when someone tries to fuck us up."

"Think it over carefully," Jimmy Stone urged in his monotone. "Don't do anything stupid. You're all family men with lovely wives and beautiful children. Nice homes. Don't

act like fools."

They stared at him. The menace was there. Not defined. But there was no mistaking it.

"Listen to Jimmy," Santangelo said. "Don't do anything you might regret. What the hell, you're not losing any money. And life is short—am I right? Live, laugh, and love: that's my motto."

There was a bout of glaring. Then the two mob representatives rose to leave. They didn't offer to shake hands. The three partners watched the door close.

"Bill," Ronald Bending said, "what's our legal position on this?"

"So thin," Holloway said, "it's practically nonexistent. I suggest we take our money and try to forget the whole thing."

"Not me," Empt said in a murderous voice. "No one fucks Luther Empt and gets away with it."

"What can we do?" Holloway asked in a hopeless voice. "Sue? We haven't got a chance. Burn down the factory? What would that accomplish? They'd build another somewhere else, and we'd never get our money back."

"I'll think of something," Empt said darkly. "I'll put it to those bums."

They sat in silence then. After a while they stood up, still wordless, not looking at each other. They left separately, Holloway to his vodka, Bending to the Chez When, and Luther to May, his sweet little girl.

As he sped south on Federal Highway, Empt's rage did not cool. It wasn't the money involved. Screw the money. He'd have felt the same if some louse tried to beat him out of a five-buck bet. What fueled his anger was being treated as a fool, as a—as a
nothing
. Well, they'd learn that Luther Empt was not a nothing to be pushed around.

He hadn't phoned May, but she was there, waiting for him. Her face glowed when he tramped in. But then she must have
^se
en something, because she caught his arm anxiously.

"What's wrong, daddy?"

It's nothing," he said gruffly. "Business stuff. Get me a ^utty. Bring the bottle."

He sat in the armchair, leaning over, hunched, the glass clasped in both hands. He gulped down the drink, poured another from the bottle on the floor at his feet.

May perched on the edge of the sofa, looking at him solicitously. "Are you hungry?" she asked.

"No. I ate. How about you?"

"I had dinner. I made myself a nice hamburger with a baked potato and a salad with that creamy dressing."

"That's good," he said. "Fix yourself a drink."

"I don't really feel like a drink, daddy."

"Well, have a beer then. Have something, for God's sake. Just don't sit there."

Obediently, she went into the tiny kitchenette and poured a small glass of beer, putting the half-emptied can back into the refrigerator.

"Those bastards!" he said savagely. "I'll get them." He drank. "Think they can push me around." He drank. "I've taken on tougher nuts than those goons." He drank.

"Daddy," she said, "why don't you take off your coat and vest and loosen your tie? Make yourself comfortable and relax."

"Yeah," he said. "Good idea."

He stood up and struggled out of his jacket and vest, ripped off his tie. May took them from him and hung them away. He flopped back heavily into the armchair and poured another drink. She knelt awkwardly on the floor, unlaced his shoes, eased them off.

"There," she said. "Isn't that better?"

He nodded, beginning to feel the tension lessening. The anger was still there, but that hot need to crush, to destroy, was ebbing.

"People are shits," he said to her. "You know that?"

She pulled herself up. She went behind him, began to massage the back of his neck and his shoulders. His head lolled.

"Yeah," he said, "that feels good."

"You're all knotted up," she said. "You shouldn't let yourself get so upset."

"I can't help it. When someone tries to do me dirt, I've got to get back at them. I've always been that way."

"Shhh," she said. "Just relax. I'll take good care of you, daddy. I'll help you relax."

Standing behind him, she unbuttoned his shirt, slid her palms over his bare chest.

"Isn't that nice?" she whispered. "Don't you like that?"

He grunted, not wanting to admit he could feel pleasure while wrath consumed him. But gradually her stroking lulled him. At least here, in this apartment, he was safe. He was loved and respected.

He ordered her to undress. He commanded her to stand naked before him. She complied willingly. And when she stood close, smiling hopefully, tilted a little because of her crippled leg, a thin, peeled wand of a creature, he suddenly reached up and struck her.

He may have been brutish in bed with whores. He may have slapped one of his wives occasionally, but that had been from irritation, not from any desire to inflict pain. But this was something different.

It was open-handed: half crack, half blow. It knocked May's head to one side, broke her smile into a lopsided grimace. She staggered back. Her hand flew up to her cheek. Tears began to well, more from shock than injury.

He stared at her, his mouth open. He could not believe what he had just done. He had acted from such a fragile amalgam of anger and desire that it was beyond his ken. He could not have said why he had done such a thing.

He leaped to her with a groan. He held her to him, kissed the reddening cheek, wet eyes, trembling lips. He apologized a hundred times, begged her forgiveness. He said he was out of his mind, business worries had driven him crazy, he was a filthy, rotten animal. He began to cry.

And so, eventually, she comforted him. She said the blow hadn't hurt her; she had known worse. She said she could tell he was terribly upset the moment he walked in, and if hitting her made him feel better, why then he could beat her up, he could whip her, and she would accept it gladly.

"Do you still love me?" she asked him.

He nodded dumbly, still stricken by what he had done and trying to find the why of it.

She led him to the couch, sat him down, brought him his glass. He gulped, coughed, spluttered. She sat beside him, running her palm over his short, bristly hair, murmuring in his ear.

"Oh Jesus," he said, sighing. "Jesus Christ Almighty."

He put his drink aside and turned to her. She came into his arms eagerly, and he could feel how fragile she was. He could feel the child's tender bones, thin skin, soft muscle. He held her timorously, fearing to bruise, not trusting himself.

She moved away from his grasp. She lay back on the couch. Her long black hair curled forward over one shoulder and feathered on her delicate breasts. She held her arms up to him suppliantly. He took her frail hands, kissed her fingertips. He stared down at that pale slip of a body.

She was his little girl, his virgin. What she had been, her "May I accommodate you?"—all that was forgotten. He saw her now as his own sweet, loving maiden. Her breath was pure, flesh untainted.

There was something almost—almost—"holy" was the only word he could think of to describe how he saw her. There was a luminosity to her skin, an adoring light in her dark eyes. She was his, totally, and not any other man's.

"Love me, daddy," she said. "Please."

His tears threatened to start afresh. Not only from complete happiness, but from the gratitude he felt when he contrasted the trust of this unspoiled child with the disgusting chicanery and deceit of the thugs with whom he had just dealt.

This was clean, open, wholesome innocence. She was all love, asking nothing but love in return. Somehow her chastity strengthened him, gave him a hope he could not define. It was a quiet, lighted candle, while all about the darkness roared.

She undressed him with lazy fingers, and he let her. And all the while she spoke to him breathlessly of what they might do. She used certain words, and then giggled as a child would.

When she was naked beside him, she leaned over him, saying, "Let me do it. Let me do it." And it had somehow come about that only by her slow, clever ministrations could he find release; he could no longer play the rabid despoiler.

He did not wonder at this, but accepted it greedily. In some puzzling way, their manner of love preserved her virginity and the unique relationship he found so satisfying. To act the stud would have demolished all that.

So they loved and dreamed on, actors in a play they had created. They had both turned inside out, and revealed to each other open viscera, hearts, gray lobes and beating souls.

Their dialogue was spoken in a language foreign to both. Yet now there was a communication of hungers, each finding an answering need in the other.

Crying out, insensate to the world about them, they were joined in their buried wants, and hugged and kissed and said they loved each other.

Dr. Mary Scotsby counseled against it:

"Ted, it's still a theory, a hypothesis. And if you're wrong, you're going to lose a patient."