As he reached for the door to shut it, there was a whirring along the blacktop, and a small hunched dark shape hummed by. They saw a pale flash of face turned toward them, and all ducked involuntarily.
“What the... was that a kid? On a hike?” hissed Julio.
“Christ, Rick, we was standing right in the light,” quavered Heavy. He emitted a sudden explosive belch which for once did not crack up Julio. “We gotta leave. We can’t—”
“We aren’t quitting now,” snarled Rick. “Hell, it’s dark; he was by before he could see anything.”
For a moment they wavered, group discipline shattered. Champ was the one who saved it for Rick. “We coulda been up to the house by now, you guys wasn’t always arguin’ with Rick.”
That did it. In a compact group they crossed Longacres and went out across the golf course. Rick, in the lead, glanced back at the others. Here they were, because he had wanted them to be, not for any other reason. He was in command. He stopped and they gathered around, their eyes gradually adjusting to the semi-darkness of a first-quarter moon.
Rick gestured down the long alley of the fairway. “See the lights just showing through those trees? Not another place within half a mile of it. We’ll go right down the fairway, across the fourteenth green, and up the driveway to the house.”
“What if someone else is with her, Rick?” Julio’s question was not a challenge this time, but a request for tactical information.
“Then we get a signal to hold off.”
Before they could frame their questions, Rick went on. The soft, already dew-wet grass was springy under their shoes, muffling any sound of their passage. In Rick’s mind, he led a commando into enemy territory: for a moment, fleetingly, he wished they had blacked their faces. Five minutes later they crossed the green, skirted the sand trap, and then stopped at a strip of weeds, some fifteen feet wide, that separated the course from the edge of the Halsteads’ gravel driveway.
“Down!” hissed Rick suddenly.
They hit the dirt. There was the growing hum of an auto, the spreading aureole of its lights above their backs. Then it was by, with the oddly abrupt drop in decibel level that always accompanies a passing auto.
Heavy spoke in an urgent, frightened whisper. “Rick, there’s a girl, just sitting in that phone booth across the blacktop with the door open and the light out. I saw her when that car passed!”
“That’s Debbie. She’s our lookout. As long as she keeps the door open, so the light in the booth is out, we know no one is coming. If she shuts I he door like she’s making a phone call, we split.”
Julio had stiffened like a retriever finding the scent when he had heard Debbie’s name. She had been in Rick’s class, a senior when he’d been a junior, and had always been too good for Julio Escobar. She’d never worried about showing her legs to the crowd as a cheerleader, but she’d never even looked at Julio. Cheap goddamn tease.
“You should have told us that our safety would depend upon a woman.” In his excitement, Julio’s voice had taken on a Spanish singsong.
“Deb doesn’t know any of you are here,” Rick said. “Once I call her in that booth, she won’t even know I’ve been here.”
He led them across the wet shallow ditch and up the winding drive through the trees. The house, as they came up under its dark bulk, proved to be an old, rambling, two-story frame building from a more leisured era of California’s history. They-stopped at the foot of the wooden steps leading to the porch where Paula had stood shortly before.
“When I ring the bell, stay out of sight. She’ll open up, I’ll ask directions. If she doesn’t recognize me, we just leave. If she does, we go in, all except Heavy. He stays on the porch and watches in case Debbie gives the signal that someone’s coming.”
At the head of the wooden stairs, Rick peered through the foot-square glass panels in the heavy oak door. His heart pounded wildly. Paula’s back was to him as she moved slowly down the row of bookshelves in the far wall of the living room. To her left were broad oak stairs; between the stairs and the bookshelves was a passageway leading to the rear of the house.
The graceful line of her neck, partially hidden by her shimmering blond hair, flowed into the line of her back and flank and finally the taut curve of her thigh as she moved indolently along. For a giddy moment Rick thought she was being openly sensual, aware of his scrutiny; then he realized that it was just her natural grace. Her brown legs were bare under a flaring peasant skirt of some brocaded material, and he could see the taut straps of her brassiere through her cotton blouse.
Rick jabbed the bell. It was so simple, suddenly: just do what he had fought against all along. He ducked back as she turned, so she wouldn’t see his face through the glass.
Paula opened the door with a false briskness and the words, “Sally, I was hoping you’d drop by and...” She stopped at sight of the pale, handsome, boyish face just level with her own. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone... else...”
Their eyes met and locked, as they had in Brewer Street the week before. Rick saw sudden recognition dawn in the piercing blue eyes. He took a short step forward and drove his right fist into her stomach. Her lungs emptied with a pneumatic whoosh that flecked spittle against his cheek, her eyes rolled up, and she crumpled. He caught her as she went down, grappling awkwardly at her dead weight.
“Champ!” he yelped. “Quick! Help me hold her, for Christ sake!”
Champ went by him, got an arm around her from behind, and they quickly shuffled her out of the doorway. Now Julio also was inside, pulling the door shut, while Heavy remained on the porch. Rick was very aware of Paula’s warm, heavy weight; his excitement was heightened rather than lessened by the beginnings of fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“Have you got her okay?” he panted.
“Yeah.”
Champ’s heavy forearm, encircling Paula and pressing up under her breasts, had burst the top buttons of her blouse. Rick couldn’t keep his eyes from the deep cleavage above her bra. Champ held her full weight easily, with only one arm, without apparent strain.
“Just hold her for a second,” said Rick.
He crossed to the hallway, found an open door just to the right, and stuck his head inside. There was a rheostat control rather than a switch for the overhead light, set so the room was almost dark but not quite. Rick could see more bookshelves, a flimsy-looking straight-backed chair like the one his ma had next to the piano, a couch, a small three-legged stool covered with a bright woven slipcover, and a side table bearing an ornate lamp and an electric clock. An oblong rag rug covered the center of the floor.
“Bring her in here, Champ,” he called unevenly. He was going to do it. Do it, do it, do it kept echoing in his mind. He probably would have done it even if she hadn’t recognized him.
Paula was gasping, still not conscious enough to be struggling, but Champ dragged her across the living room one-armed so he could hold a hand over her mouth to muffle possible outcries.
“Dump her on the couch,” said Rick. “It doesn’t matter if she yells — I don’t think anyone can hear her in here anyway.”
“But... what are you gonna do, Rick?”
All pretense of sophistication left him as he stared at the limp, sprawled woman on the couch. He was engulfed by adolescent fancies about this voluptuous woman laid out like a feast before him.