Everything seemed to cave in — sluggish, struggling figures like a movie on a blood-red film. The writhing form on top of me jerked. Mace brought a gun butt down on his head a second time, which was enough, hauling the limp body out on the dirt. A crowd started to gather.
The front of the car was pushed in, the front seat hideously compressed beneath a sheet of broken glass, gasoline and oil gurgling onto the ground. Lyria lay crumpled up there, barely stirring. I groped for the .38 on the floor, but Mace leaned in again.
“Cut it out, tough guy. Where you got the bullets for that gat I wouldn’t know, but the way you go for it makes me suspicious.” He picked it up, broke it open, and whistled. “I musta had a hunch when I saw you getting ready to blast your wife. I think the law has a better right to stop her crooked schemes, don’t you?”
I stared at him dazedly. “The law—? But you gave me an empty gun. You didn’t let on when you knew they were following us here!”
He was opening the front door, lifting Lyria up roughly. He shot me a glance. “I didn’t know whether you could handle a gun. But I thought it would help your morale. Then I thought you might go to pieces if you knew they were trailing us — like you almost did back there in the hotel room. As it is — you’re plenty okay, M. Harrison Sprague. By the way, is the guy on the ground your hotel clerk? He’s Tony Mendraza, a gentleman the Florida police have had occasion to chat with more than a few times.”
“The same, minus the glasses,” I nodded, staring out at that still heap on the ground.
Lyria came to life, slapping Mace, twisting and clawing, knocking his hat off; her voice shrilling, not the cultured voice I had known in our one short happy year of marriage. “You dirty copper—”
He would have slapped her back, hard, but I saw him look down, stiffen. He was holding her instead. Her eyes darted to me, filled with hate and loathing and — something almost like disappointment — then she was going limp, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. She lay quietly.
Mace eased her head back, reached down and brought up the tin box from the floor. He snapped the lid up, eyeing those crisp banknotes, nodding. “This is it. We got the dope on the Jacksonville bank job that was pulled last night. All here, girlie?”
She looked at me, her lips quivering-terror in her green eyes. “Monty—?”
Mace turned her face gently with his big hand. “Was your husband here going to return this? Is that one reason you wanted him out of the way? And because you’d gotten tangled up with a rat like Mendraza and thought you might as well own a manufacturing company too?”
Lyria’s lips moved. “Yes.”
My expression must have been haggard.
“Monty?” she whispered. “There wasn’t anyone in the house this morning — except Tony. He’d been there a long time. He mixed me all up. I’m no good, Monty. Sis is no good. You would have known — if you’d met her. You’ve always been blind where I was concerned. She said your voice was nice on the phone. I called her, later. You... you are nice. You—”
I forced myself to look at her. “Why didn’t you just take the money and go?” I asked bitterly. “You got me out of the house — would you really have murdered me, Lyria?”
I never found out. She couldn’t answer.
Mace laid his hand on my arm, squeezed tightly. “Steady, Sprague. Take a walk. And don’t come back if you don’t want to.”
I climbed out slowly, realizing it was the first time I had seen him with his hat off. He was almost bald. I didn’t look back.
Back Door to Hell
by James Hall
Pleasure-hunting Reba got tired of waiting for week-ends to see Joe — and went looking for another soft-touch.
It began one of those warm evenings in early May. I was at the bar of The Club Click and had just picked up my old-fashioned. Then I stopped with the glass half-way to my mouth. Across the bar Reba was staring at me. No doubt about it... it was Reba! The same honey-colored hair, swept into a casual looseness, framing her round face. The same blue eyes, narrowed and calculating, with that one eyebrow raised questioningly. The same full lips, slightly parted and slightly scornful.
The years rolled away quickly and I was right back where I had been when she walked out of my life.
“I’ve got no time for small potatoes, Joe,” she had said with her hand on the door. “I’m going places.”
“Have a good time, baby,” I’d told her.
I didn’t think she would go, but she did. In the three years that had passed I thought I’d gotten over Reba. Now, as I set my glass carefully on the bar, I knew that I hadn’t.
I rose, slowly. “George, excuse me a minute.”
George Preston’s handsome face broke into a wide grin and his dark head nodded. “I saw her, too.”
“Sure, but I saw her first!”
If it hadn’t been for George I wouldn’t have been at The Club Click. It just isn’t the kind of place you walk into unless you have some dough to toss around, even if you can still dress the part. George and I had known each other a long time. But George had gotten some breaks that I hadn’t. Or maybe he’d made some breaks that I hadn’t.
Beneath that soft, playboy exterior he was as hard as nails. He knew what he wanted — and got it. What he’d wanted wasn’t quite as green as grass, but it could buy a lot more. Now he was head of the tri-state Preston Trucking Company.
I edged my way over to the other side of the bar. “Hello,” I said.
“Well, Joe Adams!”
“Good to see you again, Reba.”
I climbed on the stool beside her as she drained her glass. “Buy you a drink?”
She turned her eyes full on me.
“For old time’s sake,” I said.
She shrugged. “Why not?”
When the fresh drinks were in front of us I tried again. “I hear you married money, Reba.”
That funny eyebrow went a little higher. “Things get around.”
“Don’t they though. Is your husband with you?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Sometimes, Joe, it’s just as boring being married to money as it is to tag along with a guy that’ll never have any.
“Especially,” she continued, “if you can’t get your hands on any of it.”
“Oh? Who is he?”
“Charles Jaxon.”
Uh-oh! Old Charlie Jaxon, of Jaxon and Durant, king of the baby food industry. “Should I say congratulations, Mrs. Jaxon?”
“Don’t bother!”
I let it go. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Anybody that isn’t old enough to be my father and doesn’t have arthritis could help.”
You should have decided that before, baby, I thought. “The description fits me,” I said.
She glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes. “You mean that?”
“Sure.”
“I thought you might be sore?”
“About walking out on me? That was yesterday. This is tonight.”
She tossed off her highball as though it were water. “My car’s outside.” One tapered, nylon-smooth leg stretched out as she turned to slid off the stool.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Miles away from town she turned down a short dirt road and halted the car. The lights of the city were spread below us like so many winking fireflies. In the distance could be heard the crashing roar of the surf. Reba edged away from the wheel, toward me.
Her face glowed momentarily in the shadow as she drew on her cigarette. “I like seeing you again, Joe.”