She knew he was looking at it. He licked dry lips.
“Pretty, isn’t it, Peter?”
Her voice was still soft. He looked into her dark eyes. They were like dull chips of black marble. Lifeless, dead, ugly and completely mad. He felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle.
“What... what happened to you?” he asked.
“Oh, it was a present from you, Peter. A lovely present from my lovely little man, my brave and righteous little man.”
“I don’t underst—”
She let go of his hands and traced the angry, puffy scar with one finger.
“See, Peter. It was a girl named Wanda something or other. She was in there because she had killed her two children. Poor thing, she had wanted to go away with a pleasant truck driver and the children were in the way. Horrid place, that prison. She worked beside me in the laundry. See my hands, Peter. A three-year sentence. I served two and a half years in the laundry. Do you think the swollen knuckles will ever go down? Red and cracked, aren’t they?”
“Look, I—”
“Don’t you want to hear about it, Peter? Wanda thought I was trying to steal her boy-friend guard... She took a pair of scissors from the tailor shop and walked up to me and slashed me. She had the general idea of removing an eye, but I ducked.”
Her cheeks were faintly hollow and the new thinness of her face made her dark, dead eyes look unnaturally enormous.
She stepped closer to him, her lips parted and said, “But I’m still attractive to you, aren’t I, Peter?”
He saw the bottle on the table by the window. He smelled the rye on her breath. With a quick stride, he reached the bottle, twisted the top off, tilted it up to his lips, swallowed deeply and nearly gagged on the tepid whiskey.
He sat down on the small couch. “Lynda, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I... what do you want?”
“Why, I wanted to see you, Peter!”
“But what can I—”
“I wanted to thank you for the favor you did me. You had to save the world from such a nasty, unpleasant woman, didn’t you?”
She sat beside him, half facing him. She giggled. “I should be on the other side of you, darling. Then the scar wouldn’t show so much.”
Peter had never felt so terrible in his life. He didn’t know what to say.
She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and smiled up at him. The dark eyes were full of hate, and as dead as two lumps of coal. But she smiled. The scar was lurid and the closeness of it made his stomach turn over.
“Remember how you told me you loved me, Peter?” she asked softly. “You still love me, don’t you, Peter? Take me in those strong arms of yours. You can draw the shades and the scar won’t show.”
“You’ve had your fun,” a new voice said. A male voice. Peter spun around quickly and saw a man leaning against the door frame. He must have been standing in the bedroom listening to the conversation.
He was anything but impressive — a smallish man with an oval gray face, sparse brown hair, faded blue eyes, a nose like a damp cruet. His voice was thin and tired. The brightest spot of color in his face was an oversized underlip which sagged away from small pointed teeth. The lip was purplish red, mottled and swollen. He wore an oxford gray suit which looked much too thick and warm for the day, but he didn’t appear to be sweating. His skin looked dry and dusty.
He licked a good third of a cigarette and put it carefully in the middle of his mouth. He lit it and left it there. It flapped as he said, “You’ve had your fun, Lynda. Let’s get down to business.”
Lynda crossed the room and sat on a chair facing Peter.
“Who are you?” Peter asked.
“Call me Miss Stanley’s manager, Hume.”
“What kind of business have you got with me?” Peter demanded.
The man began to count on tiny white fingers. “One is the house on South Walker Street. Number 809. When your father died two years ago, he left it to you. It’ll bring fifteen thousand cash money on the open market, more if we had time to play around. Two is the farm on the Mill Road. Two hundred and forty acres. Twenty-five thousand quick money. Three is the big four-hundred-acre place ten miles north of town. The one your grandpappy started. It’s worth forty thousand in a quick sale if its worth a dime. Four is a small mortgage on your office furniture and fixtures. Your credit is good. Throw in your car and you can get a thousand.
“Five is your prospective father-in-law. He has large bills tucked away. He’ll make a loan of five thousand without any questions. Give him a mysterious line about a wonderful opportunity you can’t discuss yet. The whole amount comes to the grand total of eighty-six thousand bucks. We’ll give you exactly one week to get it all together, and we want it in cash. Small used bills, nothing bigger than a fifty. You may have to drive up to Des Moines to secure some of it.”
Peter sat very still. He looked at his knuckles. He fingered the smooth place on his finger where the sapphire ring had worn the hair from it.
He said, “And why should I pay you eighty-six thousand dollars?”
“Compensation for Lynda’s injuries. Time spent in the can. For shooting off at the month.”
“I won’t pay you a dime,” Peter said.
The man laughed. “Look, brother. You don’t know what a break you’re getting. Lynda over there is real sore at you. You know what she wanted to do? She wanted me to hire some punk to come down here and fill you with hot lead. She wanted me to spend good syndicate money to maybe have you snatched and have you taken apart slow with a dull knife. But I don’t go for that kind of thing. I play it fair and square. We get the eighty-six thousand and we leave you alone.”
Peter shook his head. This couldn’t be happening in the clean little Iowa city of Sayreton, population 14,000. He said, “You’re wasting your time. I don’t scare easily.”
The man laughed again and said, “You know, she even asked me if we could cross you up and take the dough and then spray a little acid across the face of that pale babe of yours. But I told her, I said, ‘Lynda, when Archy Krakow makes a bargain with a guy, he don’t cross him up before it’s over.’ You got to understand, guy, that Lynda is real mad at you.
“Now you take the syndicate. Hell, they’re not mad. We spent good money getting Lynda planted in that overseas slot so she could handle shipments for us. You ratting on her was just one of the breaks of the game. We don’t hold a grudge. But Lynda’s different. She takes it personal.”
Peter looked over at Lynda and then looked quickly away. An avid desire for his death was plain in her eyes. But it was the thought of what might happen to Annaly that really got him.
“Suppose I don’t want to pay,” Peter said.
“Guy, I hope you’re just asking out of curiosity,” Krakow said. “Just as a teaser, I might have Lynda go to your house, tear her dress and scratch herself up a little and then phone the cops. This is a small town, Pete. People don’t go for that sort of stuff.”
“This is extortion. There are laws against it.”
Krakow licked another cigarette. “Call the cops, guy. Lynda is an old overseas pal of yours. No harm in looking you up, is there? You just want to give her a little present, guy. Eighty-six thousand bucks. Let her pick out her own present.”
“It’s only money,” Lynda said hoarsely. “It’s not enough. I hope he doesn’t pay. I hope he tries to get wise.”
“Shut up,” Krakow said gently.
Lynda stood up and her mouth was a thin, tight line. She walked over to Peter, looked down at him and said, “I told myself every night for nearly three years, Peter, that one day I’d watch you roll on the floor and scream. I might still do that, you know. I might do something worse.”