The Erection Set (47 page)

“Where you go, I go,” she said.

“I'll take you someplace you'll wish you hadn't gone to,” I told her.

“Take me.”

I ran my hand over her face, then down across her breasts and let it nestle in the beautiful V between her thighs. I could feel the furry outline under her clothes, the woman crevice and nearly the moist heat before I let my hand drift back up to her face again. “I will when I get there,” I said.

 

We both liked the night, but this time it was on my side because I was letting myself be the hunted. I knew where I was and where I was going. The hunter didn't. He had to think, plot and plan, then act accordingly, knowing the trap might be there. Ever wary. Ever deadly. He knew all the tricks too. He could find me, he could find my car. He could put a bullet next to my temple to say he was waiting, always knowing the chance he was taking and somebody started laughing very low and I damn near looked to see who it was until I remembered it was me.

When
does
the fox outfox the fox?

She had parked her car in the main lot and some of the others were pulling out when I shoved her into the Ford and got behind the wheel. I pushed her down, slumped in the seat and got out into traffic and made the circuit behind the others who were all going to Tod's, and while I was making like I was looking for a parking place, backed into a driveway, turned around and swung back against traffic. I cut right into a deserted section, made a complete orbit, picked up the highway, headed toward New York, took the first intersection off and drove back into Linton on the old road.

It took a good hour and a half, but I finally found the right dirt road and turned the car into the area I was looking for and left the headlights on long enough for Sharon to see what I had to show her.

Leyland Hunter had hired a good crew. They had done a good job. Her old house was standing there sparkling white in the beam of my headlights with her old bicycle reconditioned and newly painted, leaning against the railing on the porch. A white envelope was tucked into the screen door and I knew what it was. I got out, walked around the car, opened the door and eased her off the seat.

She knew too, but she really wasn't sure until she opened the envelope and saw the key attached to the deed.

“Yours, little bleachie.”

“Dog ...” I could barely hear her.

“All reconditioned. Like when you left it.”

“Why?”

“At least one of us has to have something to show for it all.”

She tried to say something, but the tears stopped her. She put the key in the lock and turned the knob. The door opened silently. When she reached for the light switch it flicked on and I heard her breath catch in her throat.

“I guess the counselor asked questions,” I said.

There was nothing pretentious about it. It was only an old-fashioned house so warm and comfortable you thought you could smell pies in the oven and hear kid voices from the yard while the older ones were slapping the cards down on the table with the women serving beer from pitchers and trading gossip in the kitchen. No place for women lib types at all. The paint smell still was there and the new carpet feel was underfoot and it was ready to be lived in if anybody wanted to live with all the nostalgia of a long time ago.

“It's lovely, Dog.”

“You were lucky, honey. I wish I had had one like it.”

“But you had the big house on the hill.”

“Not me. I was a bastard.”

“Is ... upstairs ... ?”

I shrugged. “Go look.”

We went up the blue-carpeted stairs and when she opened the doors of each room she smiled and then she came to her own room. Where they had done their work only too well. Her eyes were wet and her mouth was wet and I had to leave her right then.

Very slowly, she turned around, looked at me a very long time and slid her jacket off. Just as slowly she unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall in a heap on the floor. She wasn't wearing a brassiere at all and her breasts were full, pouting, and the tips of them perked up into delicious little knots.

“No, honey,” I said, and she hooked her fingers in her skirt so that it fell off too and all she had on was the little pair of bikini pants that lasted another few seconds before she was nakedly unashamed in front of me, her virginal pussy smiling with parted lips because it didn't know any better, the brown hair in its delicious isosceles making fun of the blonde above and she lay down on her own bed where she slept as a child, legs spread in total invitation, but looking at her hands a minute before asking the question.

“Who are you, Dog?”

“You know me.”

“Nobody knows you, Dog. Not now. Maybe I know more than you think I do, but I want to hear you say it yourself.”

“Why? You wouldn't believe me anyway.”

“Take off your clothes.”

“No.”

“I want to see your dick.”

“Damn it, stop that!”

“Let me see your dick.” Her legs twitched and she smiled at me. My fingers started reaching for buttons and zippers.

“Damn it to hell ...”

“Dog ... don't fret. I couldn't help myself either.”

My shirt and pants were gone and I had a hard-on I didn't deserve and she was lying there naked in the light with one hand stroking her belly down into the fuzz and I heard my ears ring and felt my stomach tighten and went over next to her where she could reach up and feel me.

“Sharon ...”

She wet one finger and ran it between her legs. “Who are you, Dog?”

“Listen ...”

“Start from the war. Tell me about Roland Holland.”

I reached down past my fucking erection and picked up the .45 where I had dropped it and tossed it on the bed beside the pillow. It was an outlandish situation and I had to think and that was all I could do.

“Roland Holland,” she insisted.

“A business genius,” I said. “I gave him my savings and terminal leave pay to start up a company. I took out ten percent. He is legitimate.”

She was still looking at one hand until she decided she wasn't wet enough, so touched her fingertip to her lips.

“Ten percent of many millions is many millions.”

“Smart, baby, now drop dead because I'm going to get dressed.”

She squirmed around and pointed it right at me. “You said you were going to take me.”

“Sharon...”

“That man in New York ... Vince Tobano. He's a policeman.”

“Damn it to hell, will you ...”

“All you have to do is tell me. You turned me inside out to make me hate you. Why not just tell me?”

I wished my damn cock would go limp. The thing didn't have any kind of conscience at all. I picked up my pants, got a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. Then sat on the end of the bed, my back toward her.

“They recruited me,” I said.

“Who did?”

“The government. My cover was perfect. I was already rich. They made me a black marketeer, I got into the big stuff and when everything went bust it was never my fault but some sloppy operation on the other end. I was always in the rackets. Only the agency and a couple of individuals knew I was on the other side.”

“In New York...”

“Doll, Vince Tobano is the straightest cop you ever met.

The guy I shook the shit out of was Chet Linden who heads up the big D.C. splash. He was all bombed out thinking I'd blow the picture and when I handed them that casket I damn near browned out trying to keep the laugh in. Don't you know old Vince'll get a promotion out of the deal and that idiot Chet will get his ass eaten out by the old man in the Pentagon for letting it go that far? Hell, Chet wouldn't dare let his guys lay a gun on me or Vince'll take him apart. Or I might get teed off, which could even be worse. The fucking syndicate lost their millions in heroin, the mighty have tumbled, the Establishment is sucking their thumbs waiting to see how they can get back at us, knowing they never can, and ...”

I looked down at my pants on the floor and she followed my eyes. One pocket where I had put the strange metallic ball was hanging up in the air.

“And I'd like to fuck you,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“Then why haven't you?”

“You've been engaged. Now you said the guy was dead.”

“Did you really have a moral obligation not to fuck me?”

“I prefer to think so.”

“Sucker,” she said.

I turned around and looked at her, one hand resting very lightly on her throat. “Don't say that.”

“Tod almost told you.”

“What?”

“There was a little girl who was ten years old when you went into the army and the only one who walked you to the railroad station. You said when you came back you'd marry her and you stopped in the dime store and bought her a green ring. She wore it for all the years until she thought the man she was waiting for was dead.” She smiled, dipped down into the pocket of her blouse and took the silly little ring out and put it back on her finger. “It must be awful having to wait for a virgin this long. I hope the going isn't too tough.”

It was all too fast, too ridiculous and too true. It came back with the effect of a tidal wave, sweeping over me, washing out the old and planting the new. She was all beautiful and slippery and blonde and brunette at once with those crazy curving hills and sloped, wet banks like a rained-on race course that heaved and undulated with tiny muscular spasms aching to be relieved in a gigantic orgasm and I was there in her little room where she slept as a girl, in a room something like where my pop slept with my mother and now it was going to be all right, the factory, the old men, Linton, the coming home ... it was going to be all right because they had given me that little ball of metal that would turn the world upside down.

And as I was rolling onto her I heard the voice say, “How pretty. How pretty.”

But he shouldn't have said it the second time, enjoying the scene of naked flesh, part soft and part hard, wondering where to put the bullet, because wherever a .45 hits you it tears one hell of a hole and the .45 was right next to my hand and the first shot took his arm off and the second left no memory of Arnold Bell's face in anybody's mind because he had no face left to remember. His skin and bones were indented on the wall behind the headless body and tomorrow I'd have to get another crew out here to clean up and patch the hole and if I were lucky, the quarts of blood wouldn't flow through the cracks in the floor and ruin the ceiling downstairs.

“Now?” I asked her.

The two shots were still reverberating in her ears. She looked at the mess by the door and didn't get sick at all. She didn't hear me, but she knew what I said.

Sharon smiled and turned the old brass ring around so it looked like a cheap wedding band. “Shut up and fuck me,” she said, “like a dog.”