They entered the room and he saw Riker in the bed. He saw the brown wavy hair and there was some grey in it along the temples. In the suntanned face there were wrinkles and lines of dissipation and other lines that told of too much worry. Riker’s eyes were shut tightly and it was the kind of slumber that rests the limbs but not the brain.
Ken thought, He’s aged a lot in nine years; it used to be mostly muscle and now it’s mostly fat.
Riker was curled up, his knees close to his paunch. He had his shoes off but otherwise he was fully dressed. He wore a silk shirt and a hand-painted necktie, his jacket was dark grey cashmere and his slacks were pale grey high-grade flannel. He had on a pair of argyle socks that must have set him back at least twenty dollars. On the wrist of his left hand there was a platinum watch to match the large star-emerald he wore on his little finger. On the third finger of his left hand he had a three-karat diamond. Ken was looking at the expensive clothes and the jewelry and thinking, He travels first-class, he really rides the gravy train.
It was a bitter thought and it bit deeper into Ken’s brain. He said to himself, Nine years ago this man of distinction pistol-whipped your skull and left you for dead. You’ve had nine years in Quentin and he’s had the sunshine, the peaches-and-cream, the thousands of nights with the extra-lovely Mrs. Riker while you slept alone in a cell—
He looked at the extra-lovely Mrs. Riker. She stood motionless at the side of the bed and he stood beside her with the switchblade aiming at her velvet-sheathed flesh. She was looking at the blade and waiting for him to aim it at Riker, to put it in the sleeping man and send it in deep.
But that wasn’t the play. He smiled dimly to let her know he had something else in mind.
Riker’s left hand dangled over the side of the bed and his right hand rested on the pillow. Ken kept the knife aimed at Hilda as he reached toward the pillow and then under the pillow. His fingers touched metal. It was the barrel of a revolver and he got a two-finger hold on it and eased it out from under the pillow. The butt came into his palm and his middle finger went through the trigger-guard and nestled against the back of the guard, not touching the trigger.
He closed the switchblade and put it in his pocket. He stepped back and away from the bed and said, “Now you can wake up your husband.”
She was staring at the muzzle of the .38. It wasn’t aiming at anything in particular.
“Wake him up,” Ken murmured. “I want him to see his gun in my hand. I want him to know how I got it.”
Hilda gasped and it became a sob and then a wail and it was a hook of sound that awakened Riker. At first he was looking at Hilda. Then he saw Ken and he sat up very slowly, as though he was something made of stone and ropes were pulling him up. His eyes were riveted to Ken’s face and he hadn’t yet noticed the .38. His hand crept down along the side of the pillow and then under the pillow.
There was no noise in the room as Riker’s hand groped for the gun. Some moments passed and then there was sweat on Riker’s forehead and under his lip and he went on searching for the gun and suddenly he seemed to realize it wasn’t there. He focused on the weapon in Ken’s hand and his body began to quiver. His lips scarcely moved as he said, “The gun... the gun—”
“It’s yours,” Ken said. “Mind if I borrow it?”
Riker went on staring at the revolver. Then very slowly his head turned and he was staring at Hilda. “You,” he said. “You gave it to him.”
“Not exactly,” Ken said. “All she did was tell me where it was.”
Riker shut his eyes very tightly, as though he was tied to a rack and it was pulling him apart.
Hilda’s face was expressionless. She was looking at Ken and saying, “You promised to let me walk out—”
“I’m not stopping you,” he said. Then, with a shrug and a dim smile, “I’m not stopping anyone from doing what they want to do.” And he slipped the gun into his pocket.
Hilda started for the door. Riker was up from the bed and lunging at her, grabbing her wrist and hurling her across the room. Then Riker lunged again and his hands reached for her throat as she tried to get up from the floor. Hilda began to make gurgling sounds but the noise was drowned in the torrent of insane screaming that came from Riker’s lips. Riker choked her until she died. When Riker realized she was dead his screaming became louder and he went on choking her.
Ken stood there, watching it happen. He saw the corpse flapping like a rag-doll in the clutching hands of the screaming madman. He thought, Well, they wanted each other, and now they got each other.
He walked out of the room and down the hall and down the stairs. As he went out of the house he could still hear the screaming. On Spruce, walking toward Eleventh, he glanced back and saw a crowd gathering outside the house and then he heard the sound of approaching sirens. He waited there and saw the police-cars stopping in front of the house, the policemen rushing in with drawn guns. Some moments later he heard the shots and he knew that the screaming man was trying to make a getaway. There was more shooting and suddenly there was no sound at all. He knew they’re be carrying two corpses out of the house.
He turned away from what was happening back there, walked along the curb toward the sewer-hole on the corner, took Riker’s gun from his pocket and threw it into the sewer. In the instant that he did it, there was a warm sweet taste in his mouth. He smiled, knowing what it was. Again he could hear Tillie saying, “Revenge is black pudding.” Tillie, he thought. And the smile stayed on his face as he walked north on Eleventh. He was remembering the feeling he’d had when he’d kissed her. It was the feeling of wanting to take her out of that dark cellar, away from the loneliness and the opium. To carry her upward toward the world where they had such things as clinics, with plastic specialists who repaired scarred faces.
The feeling hit him again and he was anxious to be with Tillie and he walked faster.
Switch Ending
by Richard Marsten
You get out of jail and you look for your son. And when your son’s headed for jail, too, you get mad. Killing mad.
I held Tigo against the wall with one fist bunched into the front of his shirt, and with his spit falling down over his lips and jaw and trailing onto my hand.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
Tigo shook his head, with his eyes blue and wide, and streaked with bloodshot cobwebs.
“Where is he, Tigo? Tell me where he is.”
Tigo started to shake his head again, and this time I helped him a little. I gave him the back of my knuckles, hard, splitting his cheek and mixing a little blood with his spit. His head rocked over to one side, and a wash of sweat spilled from his straight black hair.
“You were supposed to take care of him, Tigo. All right, you didn’t. Now all I want to know is where is he? Either that, or we play the game, Tigo, only we play it harder.”
“Danny, I’m your brother-in-law, your own...”
“Where is he, Tigo?”
“It’s not my fault your sister left me, Danny. You can’t blame that on me. I watched the kid good, I swear. I took care of him...”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know, Danny.”
I hit him again, only this time it wasn’t my knuckles. This time it was my bunched fist, and it collided with the bridge of his nose, and his eyes began to water and blood spilled from his nostrils in a steady stream, warm with the heat of his body.
“Danny...”
“Where, Tigo?”
His eyes held the opaque stare of someone who’s been on heroin for a long time, and I thought of the kid and cursed my rotten sister for walking out and leaving him with this lump. I hit Tigo again, and he screamed like a woman in childbirth, and the sweat stood out on his face in giant shimmering globules. He moved his lips, and I was ready to start on his teeth next when he began to blubber.