Whispers Page 4

  Frye waved the knife at her, drew small rapid circles in the air with the point of the blade, as if it were a talisman and he were chasing off evil spirits that stood between him and Hilary.

  And he took another step.

  She lined up the forward sight with the center of his abdomen, so that no matter how high the recoil kicked her hands and no matter whether the gun pulled to the left or the right, she would hit something vital. She squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Please, God!

  He took two steps.

  She stared at the pistol, stunned. She had forgotten to throw off the safety catches.

  He was maybe eight feet from the other side of the bed. Maybe only six.

  Swearing at herself, she thumbed the two tiny levers on the side of the pistol, and a pair of red dots appeared on the black metal. She aimed and pulled the trigger a second time.

  Nothing.

  Jesus! What? It can’t be jammed!

  Frye was so completely disassociated from reality, so thoroughly possessed by his madness, that he did not realize immediately that she was having problems with the weapon. When he finally saw what was happening, he moved in fast, while the advantage was his. He reached the bed, scrambled onto it, stood up, started straight across the mattress like a man walking a bridge of barrels, swaying on the springy surface.

  She had forgotten to jack a bullet into the chamber. She did that and retreated two steps until she backed into the wall. She squeezed off a shot without taking aim, fired up at him as he loomed directly over her like a demon leaping out of a crack in hell.

  The sound of the shot filled the room. It slapped off the walls and reverberated in the windows.

  She saw the knife shatter, saw the fragments arc out of Frye’s right hand. The sharp steel flew up and back, sparkling for a moment in the shaft of light that escaped through the open top of the bedside lamp.

  Frye howled as the knife spun away from him. He fell backwards and rolled off the far side of the bed. But he was up as soon as he went down, cradling his right hand in his left.

  Hilary didn’t think she had hit him. There wasn’t any blood. The bullet must have struck the knife, breaking it and tearing it out of his grasp. The shock would have stung his fingers worse than the crack of a whip.

  Frye wailed in pain, screamed in rage. It was a wild sound, a jackal’s bark, but it was definitely not the cry of an animal with its tail between its legs. He still intended to come after her.

  She fired again, and he went down again. This time he stayed down.

  With a little whimper of relief, Hilary sagged wearily against the wall, but she did not take her eyes off the place where he had gone down and where he now lay out of sight beyond the bed.

  No sound.

  No movement.

  She was uneasy about not being able to see him. Head cocked, listening intently, she moved cautiously to the foot of the bed, out into the room, then around to the left until she spotted him.

  He was belly-down on the chocolate-brown Edward Fields carpet. His right arm was tucked under him. His left arm was flung straight out in front, the hand curled slightly, the still fingers pointing back toward the top of his head. His face was turned away from her. Because the carpet was so dark and plush and eye-dazzlingly textured, she had some difficulty telling from a distance if there was any blood soaked into it. Quite clearly, there was not an enormous sticky pool like the one she had expected to find. If the shot had hit him in the chest, the blood might be trapped under him. The bullet might even have taken him squarely in the forehead, bringing instant death and abrupt cessation of heartbeat; in which case, there would be only a few drops of blood.

  She watched him for a minute, two minutes. She could not detect any movement, not even the subtle rise and fall of his breathing.

  Dead?

  Slowly, timidly, she approached him.

  “Mr. Frye?”

  She didn’t intend to get too close. She wasn’t going to endanger herself, but she wanted a better look at him. She kept the gun trained on him, ready to put another round into him if he moved.

  “Mr. Frye?”

  No response.

  Funny that she should keep calling him “Mr. Frye.” After what had happened tonight, after what he had tried to do to her, she was still being formal and polite. Maybe because he was dead. In death, the very worst man in town is accorded hushed respect even by those who know that he was a liar and a scoundrel all his life. Because every one of us must die, belittling a dead man is in a way like belittling ourselves. Besides, if you speak badly about the dead, you somehow feel that you are mocking that great and final mystery—and perhaps inviting the gods to punish you for your effrontery.

  Hilary waited and watched as another minute dragged past.

  “You know what, Mr. Frye? I think I won’t take any chances with you. I think I’ll just put another bullet in you right now. Yeah. Fire a round right in the back of your head.”

  Of course, she wasn’t able to do that. She wasn’t violent by nature. She had fired the gun on a shooting range once, shortly after she bought it, but she had never killed a living thing larger than the cockroaches in that Chicago apartment. She had found the will to shoot at Bruno Frye only because he had been an immediate threat and she had been pumped full of adrenaline. Hysteria and a primitive survival instinct had made her briefly capable of violence. But now that Frye was on the floor, quiet and motionless, no more menacing than a pile of dirty rags, she could not easily bring herself to pull the trigger. She couldn’t just stand there and watch as she blew the brains out of a corpse. Even the thought of it turned her stomach. But the threat of doing it was a good test of his condition. If he was faking, the possibility of her shooting pointblank at his skull ought to make him give up his act.

  “Right in the head, you bastard,” she said, and she fired a round into the ceiling.

  He didn’t flinch.

  She sighed and lowered the pistol.

  Dead. He was dead.

  She had killed a man.

  Dreading the coming ordeal with police and reporters, she edged around the outstretched arm and headed for the hall door.

  Suddenly, he was not dead any more.

  Suddenly, he was very much alive and moving.

  He anticipated her. He’d known exactly how she was trying to trick him. He’d seen through the ruse, and he’d had nerves of steel. He hadn’t even flinched!

  Now he used the arm under him to push up and forward, striking at Hilary as if he were a snake, and with his left hand he seized her ankle and brought her down, screaming and flailing, and they rolled over, a tangle of arms and legs, then over again, and his teeth were at her throat, and he was snarling like a dog, and she had the crazy fear that he was going to bite her and tear open her jugular vein and suck out all of her blood, but then she got a hand between them, got her palm under his chin and levered his head away from her neck as they rolled one last time, and then they came up against the wall with jarring impact and stopped, dizzy, gasping, and he was like a great beast on her, so rough, so heavy, crushing her, leering down at her, his hideous cold eyes so frighteningly close and deep and empty, his breath foul with onions and stale beer, and he had one hand under her dress, shredding her pantyhose, trying to get his big blunt fingers under her panties and gain a grip on her sex, not a lover’s grip but a fighter’s grip, and the thought of the damage he might do to her softest tissues made her gag with horror, and she knew it was even possible to kill a woman that way, to reach up inside and claw and rip and pull, so she tried frantically to scratch his cobalt eyes and blind him, but he swiftly drew his head back, out of range, and then they both abruptly froze, for they realized simultaneously that she had not dropped the pistol when he had pulled her down onto the floor. It was wedged between them, the muzzle pressed firmly into his crotch—and although her finger was on the trigger guard instead of the trigger itself, she was able to slip it back a notch and put it
in the proper place even as she became aware of the situation.

  His heavy hand was still on her pubis. An obscene thing. A leathery, demonic, disgusting hand. She could feel the heat of it even through the glove he was wearing. He was no longer clawing at her panties. Trembling. His big hand was trembling.

  The bastard’s scared.

  His eyes seemed to be fastened to hers by an invisible thread, a strong thread that would not break easily. Neither of them could look away.

  “If you make one wrong move,” she said weakly, “I’ll blow your balls off.”

  He blinked.

  “Understand?” she asked, unable to put any force in her voice. She was wheezing and breathless with exertion and, mostly, with fear.

  He licked his lips.

  Blinked slowly.

  Like a goddamned lizard.

  “Do you understand?” she demanded, putting bite into it this time.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t fool me again.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  His voice was deep and gruff, as before, and it did not waver. There wasn’t anything in his voice or eyes or face to betray his hard-muscled tough guy image. But his gloved hand continued to spasm nervously on the sensitive juncture of her thighs.

  “Okay,” she said. “What I want you to do is move very slowly. Very, very slowly. When I give the word, we’re going to roll over very slowly, until you’re on the bottom and I’m on the top.”

  Without being the least amused, she was aware that what she had said bore a grotesque resemblance to an eager lover’s suggestion in the middle of the sex act.

  “When I tell you to, and not a second before I tell you to, you’ll roll to your right,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “And I’ll move with you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Nice and easy.”

  “Sure.”

  “And I’ll keep the gun where it is.”

  His eyes were still hard and cold, but the insanity and the rage had gone out of them. The thought of having his sex organs shot off had snapped him back into the real world—at least temporarily.

  She poked the barrel of the gun hard against his privates, and he grimaced with pain.

  “Now roll over easy,” she said.

  He did exactly what she had instructed him to do, moved onto his side with exaggerated care, then onto his back, never taking his eyes from hers. He slipped his hand out from under her dress as they reversed positions, but he didn’t attempt to take the pistol from her.

  She clung to him with her left hand, the gun clenched in her right, and she went over with him, keeping the muzzle firmly in his crotch. Finally she was atop him, one arm trapped between them, the .32 automatic still strategically placed.

  Her right hand was beginning to go numb because of the awkward position, but also because she was squeezing the pistol with all of her might and was afraid to hold it any less surely. Her grip was so fierce that her fingers and the muscles up the length of her arm ached with the effort. She was worried that somehow he would sense the growing weakness in her hand—or that she would actually let go of the gun against her will as her fingers lost all feeling.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to slide off you. I’m going to keep the gun where it is, and I’m going to slip off beside you. Don’t move. Don’t even blink.”

  He stared at her.

  “You got that?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Keeping the .32 on his scrotum, she disengaged herself from him as if she were rising from a bed of nitroglycerin. Her abdominal muscles were painfully tight with tension. Her mouth was dry and sour. Their noisy breathing seemed to fill the bedroom like rushing wind, yet her hearing was so acute that she could detect the soft ticking of her Cartier watch. She slid to one side, got up on her knees, hesitated, finally pushed all the way to her feet and shuffled quickly out of his reach before he could trip her again.

  He sat up.

  “No!” she said.

  “What?”

  “Lie down.”

  “I’m not coming after you.”

  “Lie down.”

  “Just relax.”

  “Dammit, lie down!”

  He would not obey her. He just sat there. “So what happens next?”

  Waving the pistol at him, she said, “I told you to lie down. Flat on your back. Do it. Now.”

  He twisted his lips into one of those ugly smiles that he did so well. “And I asked you what happens next.”

  He was trying to regain control of the situation, and she did not like that. On the other hand, did it really matter whether he was sitting or lying down? Even sitting up, he could not get to his feet and cross the space between them faster than she could put a couple of bullets into him.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “Sit up if you insist. But you make one move toward me, and I’ll empty the gun on you. I’ll spread your guts all over the room. I swear to Christ I will.”

  He grinned and nodded.

  Shivering, she said, “Now, I’m going to the bed. I’ll sit down there and phone the police.”

  She moved sideways and backwards, crablike, one small step at a time, until she got to the bed. The telephone was on the nightstand. The moment she sat down and lifted the receiver, Frye disobeyed her. He stood up.

  “Hey.”

  She dropped the receiver and clutched the pistol with both hands, trying to keep it steady.

  He held his hands out placatingly, palms toward her. “Wait. Just wait a second. I’m not going to touch you.”

  “Sit down.”

  “I’m not coming anywhere near you.”

  “Sit down right now.”

  “I’m going to walk out of here,” Frye said.

  “Like hell you are.”

  “Out of this room and out of this house.”

  “No.”

  “You won’t try to shoot me if I just leave.”

  “Try me and you’ll be sorry.”

  “You won’t,” he said confidently. “You aren’t the type to pull the trigger unless you don’t have any other choice. You couldn’t kill me in cold blood. You couldn’t shoot me in the back. Not in a million years. Not you. You don’t have that kind of strength. You’re weak. Just too damned weak.” He gave her that ghastly grin again, that wide death’s head smile, and he took one step toward the door. “You can call the cops when I’m gone.” Another step. “It would be different if I was a stranger. Then I might have a chance to get away scot-free. But after all, you can tell them who I am.” Another step. “See, you’ve already won, and I’ve lost. All I’m doing is buying a little time. A very little bit of time.”

  She knew he was right about her. She could kill him if he attacked, but she was not capable of shooting him while he retreated.

  Sensing her unspoken acknowledgment of the truth in what he had said, Frye turned his back on her. His smug self-confidence infuriated her, but she could not pull the trigger. He had been sidling carefully toward the exit. Now, he strode boldly out of the room, not bothering to glance back. He disappeared through the broken door, and his footsteps echoed along the hallway.

  When Hilary heard him thumping down the stairs, she realized that he might not leave the house. Unobserved, he could slip into one of the downstairs rooms and hide in a closet, wait patiently until the police had come and gone, then slither out of his hole and strike her by surprise. She hurried to the head of the stairs and got there just in time to see him turn right, into the foyer. A moment later, she heard him rattling the locks; then he went out and threw the door shut behind him with a loud wham!

  She was three-quarters of the way down the stairs when she realized he might have faked his departure. He might have slammed the door without leaving. He might be waiting for her in the foyer.

  Hilary was carrying the pistol at her side, the muzzle directed safely at the floor, but she raised it in dread anticipation. She descended the stairs, and on the bott
om step she paused for a long while, listening. At last, she eased forward until she could see into the foyer. It was empty. The closet door stood open. Frye wasn’t in there either. He was really gone.

  She closed the closet door.

  She went to the front door and double-locked it.

  Weaving slightly, she walked across the living room, in the study. The room smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish; the two women from the cleaning agency had been in yesterday. Hilary switched on the light and drifted to the big desk. She put the gun in the center of the blotter.

  Red and white roses filled the vase on the window table. They added a sweet contrasting fragrance to the lemon air.

  She sat down at the desk and pulled the telephone in front of her. She looked up the number for the police.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, her vision blurred with hot tears. She tried to hold them back. She was Hilary Thomas, and Hilary Thomas did not cry. Not ever. Hilary Thomas was tough. Hilary Thomas could take all the crap the world wanted to throw at her and keep on taking it and never break down. Hilary Thomas could handle herself perfectly well, thank you. Even though she squeezed her eyes shut, the flood would not be contained. Fat tears tracked down her cheeks and settled saltily in the corners of her mouth, then dribbled over her chin. At first she wept in eerie silence, emitting not even the shallowest whimper. But after a minute or so, she began to twitch and shiver, and her voice was shaken loose. In the back of her throat, she made a wet choking sound which swiftly grew into a sharp little cry of despair. She broke. She let out a terrible quaverous wail and hugged herself. She sobbed and sputtered and gasped for breath. She pulled Kleenex from a decorator dispenser on one corner of the desk, blew her nose, got hold of herself—then shuddered and began to sob again.

  She was not crying because he had hurt her. He hadn’t caused her any lasting or unbearable pain—at least not physically. She was weeping because, in some way she found difficult to define, he had violated her. She boiled with outrage and shame. Although he had not raped her, although he had not even managed to tear off her clothes, he had demolished her crystal bubble of privacy, a barrier that she had constructed with great care and upon which she had placed a great value. He had smashed into her snug world and had pawed everything in it with his dirty hands.

  Tonight, at the best table in the Polo Lounge, Wally Topelis had begun to convince her that she could let down her guard at least a fraction of an inch. For the first time in her twenty-nine years, she seriously had considered the possibility of living much less defensively than she had been accustomed to living. With all the good news and Wally’s urging, she had been willing to look at the idea of a life with less fear, and she had been attracted to it. A life with more friends. More relaxation. More fun. It was a shining dream, this new life, not easily attained but worth the struggle to achieve it. But Bruno Frye had taken that fragile dream by the throat and had throttled it. He had reminded her that the world was a dangerous place, a shadowy cellar with nightmare creatures crouching in the dark corners. Just as she was struggling out of her pit, before she had a chance to enjoy the world above ground, he kicked her in the face and sent her tumbling back where she came from, down into doubt and fear and suspicion, down into the awful safety of loneliness.

  She wept because she felt violated. And because she was humiliated. And because he had taken her hope and stomped on it the way a school-yard bully crushes the favorite toy of a weaker child.

  chapter two

  Patterns.

  They fascinated Anthony Clemenza.

  At sundown, before Hilary Thomas had even gone home, while she was still driving through the hills and canyons for relaxation, Anthony Clemenza and his partner, Lieutenant Frank Howard, were questioning a bartender in Santa Monica.