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He lifted his face and looked at the girl, the left corner of his mouth twitching, oozing a thin smear of spit. He put his fingers against the tic as if he would mash it out of the flesh. His features twisted a little out of shape, and for a moment he was on the verge of rocking sobs.

“Get hold of yourself, Hertie!” the girl said.

“How could you do it, Carol?” He looked her up and down. His face filled with loathing for her and himself. What had he ever seen in her? She was sleazy, common, coarse. Even the animal magnetism wouldn’t last long. The signs were already there, the broad splayed toes in the crummy sandals, the faint thickness of bone in the ankles, the slight bow in the tapering young legs, the hint of bovine broadness in the hips. One day, before many years had passed, she’d have the allure of a bowling pin capped with brassy hair and a face hardened like cement.

His face mirrored his depth of feeling, and her lips thinned. “You got something on your mind besides the thoughts of a dirty old man chasing a young girl?”

He looked away, a faint murmur, moan-like on his trembling lips. He was fortyish. Old? Right now he felt too old to die. He heard her suck in a breath. He knew the signs. She had a temper like an undisciplined infant. “Carol, please...”

“You thought I was real cool the night you picked me up in the bar,” she said, gathering words, venom. “Afterwards, how about afterwards... lovesick old creep. Always knocking at my door. Making with the flowers and candy. Smooth talker, you! Going to do great things for me. Now look at the mess you’ve got me into!”

“I?” he said. A soft, mild laugh came from him. “I? You were supposed to stay in my quarters, out of sight, any time I brought you here. But today, when I come back to the apartment, what do I hear? What do I see? I hear you in here, in her bedroom. I hear words between you. And a blow. And the sound of her striking the floor. And I rush in — and she is lying there” — a shiver crossed his shoulders — “just as she is now. A hole knocked in her skull. You standing over her with the lamp in your hand.”

He began to giggle. “What brought you in here, Carol? Brattish curiosity? Or were you looking for something to pilfer that she might not miss?”

His words were a dash of cold water on her temper. They rebuilt the bugged-out scene in Carol’s mind. She’d got bored in Hertie’s bed-sitting room, nothing on TV that was interesting, nothing to do while she waited for him. She knew the old lady was out and that the cleaning maid wouldn’t come in until later. Being alone in the apartment, she’d felt the prod of temptation.

Twice before she’d sneaked out things that wouldn’t be noticed right away, that could be accounted as lost. A diamond-studded watch the old lady hadn’t worn in a long time, lying carelessly in a drawer. A pair of silver candleholders gathering dust on the back of a shelf in the storage closet.

Never enough to arouse suspicion. Trinkets — junk, the way the rich old lady would look at it. Like, it wasn’t really stealing, just taking crumbs the old woman would never miss in a thousand years.

Today, Carol had seen a pearl brooch in a velvet tray on the bureau. She’d picked it up, stood looking at it and turning it in her hands, judging the risks of taking it.

“How dare you!” the old lady’s voice had sounded almost in Carol’s ear. Caught up in the thought of the brooch, Carol hadn’t heard her come in. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

Furious, outraged, the old woman had been swept past fear. Her hand had moved to seize the brooch. “The nerve! The very intolerable idea of coming in here like this!”

“Let me go!”

“I’ll have the police to you. I...” The angry voice broke. The old lady had glimpsed the irrational panic in the young, coarsely pretty face. And then the old head had exploded...

Carol slowly and carefully forced the scene from her mind.

She hardened herself against remorse.

“Hertie,” she said in a sudden change of tone, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean what I did to her or what I just said to you. I’m half out of my mind, that’s all.” Her eyes filled with convincing tears.

He lifted a hollow gaze. “Are you sure she’s dead?”

“Nobody could live with a hole in the head like that. If she isn’t dead already, she’d be dead before we could do anything. What’s done is done, Hertie. We can’t turn it back.”

“We must call someone,” he said. “An ambulance — the police.” But he didn’t make any move to get up. His words were rote, vacant, words that he felt should be said. And she knew that he had no more wish to face the police than she did. She wasn’t the only one with sticky fingers. She knew that he’d been helping himself on a petty scale for a long time, padding bills the old lady had gradually come to depend on him to pay, juggling accounts as he’d blandly wormed his way further into her service.

She slipped down beside him, holding her temper even though he flinched away.

“I won’t want this to be the end of the line for us,” she said. “I do love you, Hertie. I got this crazy temper and I know I’m not good enough for you, but love happens that way sometimes.”

She sensed the conflicts straining within him. He was sick with fright for himself but had no capacity to grieve for others. He could care less for the old lady as a person, caring only that her death was a promise of disaster. He knew what he should do in the situation, but he lacked the nerve to do so.

“Hertie,” she said. “It’s done and over, like I said. If we went to prison and suffered, it wouldn’t bring her back. The only thing we can do now is make what we can for ourselves out of this awful happening.”

“It’s too late, Carol. Everything is ruined!” He reminded her of a trapped rabbit quivering for a way out.

“We have to keep our nerve, Hertie. That’s the main thing. No one knows but us what has happened. We can do a lot before anybody finds out — and by that time we’ll be long ago and far away, under different names, living the beautiful life.”

“You must be crazy!”

“Crazy for life — crazy for what we can get out of this. You don’t know opportunity when it hits you in the face.”

Opportunity,” the echo of the word gagged him slightly.

She made a small movement, gripping his bicep. “Just listen to me, Hertie. There’s a small fortune in silver, jewels, expensive bits of art right here in the apartment. A Cadillac and Mercedes outside. I know places where we can sell off the stuff fast, no questions asked.”

She paused, but he didn’t break the short silence, and she knew his mind was sniffing, nibbling, pawing at the prospect she’d raised.

“Her goods on hand is for starters, Hertie. Every fancy store in town knows her boy Friday, which is you, does a lot of shopping for her. We’ll hit them all, loading every one of her charge accounts with more goods, mountains of goods.”

He was still fooling around with the bait, but his panic was losing its first slashing edge. He was breathing almost evenly.

“There’s her bank account for whipped cream on the pie,” Carol said. “Can’t do her any good now. Might as well benefit somebody — like us.”

“You’re talking about a forged check?”

“Why not? Must be plenty of papers around the apartment you could trace her signature from. Little old forgery charge ain’t much, compared to the charges already hanging over our heads. You cash checks for her all the time. Everybody at the bank knows you.”

“Not checks big enough to dent her account.”

“And we sure want to make a nice big dent, Hertie. So we play it cool. You don’t go floating into the bank with a check that’s got a long string of zeros after the first number on it. Instead, you make a phone call. You instruct the bank that she wants the boodle delivered here by bank messenger and that her check will be waiting. Nothing about that to raise questions. When the messenger gets here with the sackful of beautiful bread, you trade him the check for it.”