The Peddler (22 page)

He wound his strong fingers in the brassiere and ripped it from her body, seeing the red marks he left on her white skin. She hissed at him, swore, lips splitting and blood trickling onto her chin. “Get away from me! You filthy, rotten—don’t touch me. You beast, you filthy, crazy—”

He hit her with his fist, knocked her back across the bed, then grabbed the pink step-ins and shredded them in his hands, ripped them free of her hips and dropped them to the floor. She moaned, stirred on the bed, only barely conscious.

“You whore,” he swore at her, rage leaping like fire in his brain, searing him, piling fuel on the dark hunger surging in him as he stared at her. He swore at her as she moved, shook her head. He pulled the clothes from his body, threw them onto the bed beside her, then crouched naked over her. Her eyes were open, staring at him.

“Tony, don’t,” she said, the words squeezed separately from her bleeding lips. “Don’t.”

He held her as she struggled, pitifully weak in the grip of his muscled arms. He pressed himself against her, pinned her wrists with his hands, used his greater strength to force himself upon her, twisting her limbs with ridiculous ease, the fire surging and leaping inside him, the hunger swirUng in his loins until the hunger was fed.

When he released her and stood beside the bed, she pulled the spread quickly over her nakedness. Tony looked down at her bruised and battered face, calmness coming over him, and shame beginning to make itself felt. His own nakedness seemed to add to the growing shame and he quickly dressed. Maria’s dark eyes stared at him, never leaving his face for a second. Neither spoke until Tony was dressed.

The rage and shame mingled in him, fluttered in his stomach and mind. He pulled wadded bills from his pocket, peeled a ten-dollar bill from his roll, crumpled it in his fist and threw it on the bed.

“There, you bitch. That’s just about what you were always worth. Find yourself another sucker.”

She didn’t speak, kept looking directly at his face, staring at him strangely. Something wasn’t right; the thought nibbled at his brain. He’d missed something. Something was—the gun. The automatic had been in his coat pocket. It wasn’t there now. He felt for it again, looked at Maria.

She was smiling at him, smiling horribly with her face twisted and puffed and bleeding, ugly, the dark eyes wide and staring. Something moved beneath the bedspread she had so quickly thrown over her body, and suddenly Tony knew she held the gun there in one small hand, pointing the lethal bore at him.

He stared at the spot beneath the spread so close to him, saw it move slightly.

“Maria,” he said. “Wait.” His voice was soft, hardly a whisper in his tightened throat.

She stared into his eyes, almost as if she were not looking at him but at something slimy and revolting. Her face twitched slightly.

He said, “Maria, sweetheart—”

And then the world exploded in his face, the roar of the automatic filled his ears and a massive weight was hurled into his chest. He felt himself thrown backwards, faUing, the walls and ceiling and lights spinning crazily as the roaring continued and mounted in his ears. There was a strange numbness all through him; he tried to comprehend what it was that had happened to him, but his braiii was frozen and his vision blurred.

There was a grayness all around him, a heaviness and a stinging in his chest. He could feel a cold chill upon him and knew that he was dying. For a moment the grayness brightened and he felt arms about his head and fingers on his cheeks. Then, close to his face, looming terribly in his eyes, was the bruised and beaten flesh that was almost the face of his Maria. But it was twisted and queerly out of shape, unlike Maria’s face, with ugly puffing lips and great staring eyes.

The great eyes moved downward toward him, the ugly lips moved and twisted, parted close to his mouth.

He tried to crawl from that as panic shuddered in him. He tried to shrink away. And he could not.

In
THE PEDDLER
, Richard S. Prather brings to his vast audience a book unlike any other he has ever written, the story of the dirty life of Tony Romero — procurer, fake, stud, heel. Tony Romero was the kind of guy who got to the top — almost — by stepping on the neck of every broad he met. There were plenty — and some of them knew almost as many tricks as Tony….

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