Kitten with a whip (7 page)

I'd better hurry home and look after you before you get into real trouble."

"I guess you'd better." He drew back his foot, threatening to kick Jody to quiet her. She got to her feet and draped the negligee about her, playing haughty. Then

she minced toward the Hving room, wagghng her bottom, pausing to grin back as he told his wife, "I love you."

They talked for another minute or so, mostly endearments, and then he was alone in the kitchen once more. As he hung up, David found himself shaking from the ordeal. He went through the back of the house into his bedroom, cast aside the towel and took his robe out of the closet. He knotted the sash tight with fury and folded the lapels over the scratch marks on his chest. Then he marched into the living room and poured himself another drink from the bottle on the coffee table.

He scarcely recognized his own voice, it was so thick with rage. "For two cents, I'd break every bone in your body. Ii my wife had heard you—"

"Shhhhl" Jody said. She was sitting astraddle the sectional arm, watching the television cartoon which was just ending.

"Listen to me!" he demanded. "What do you think you're up to, anyway?"

She turned around to face him but only because the cartoon was over and a jolly man was trying to sell her some breakfast food. She tried a demure look. "All I wanted to tell her was that I'm taking good care of you. So she wouldn't worry, you know?"

"You could have wrecked my whole life. But that doesn't sink in, does it? Nothing can get through that thick skuU of yours."

"Your whole Hfe," she said scornfully, *Tike it was a treasure or something. You're dead and don't know it. How long you been married?"

"It doesn't happen to be any of your business."

"Well, you told me the kid was going on six, so let's say seven years. Seven years, my God! Seven years you been shacked up with the same woman, you must be bored siUy. Oh, you've got a lot of nice stuff piled around the house—that dishwasher's a real gem—but what do you do for real smoky fun, huh? Sit on your fat tails and watch each other rot? Unless this is one of those neighborhoods Hke I read about in the magazines, where you rotate the wives at night?" She cocked her head at nim thoughtfully. "No," she decided, "not a chance. Not

you, David. If you ever got in the wrong bed, youd blush yourself to death. Sweet David."

At one poiat he was ready to pick up the whisky bottle and swing at her head. But fiiat ember of hate was buried deep now under a rising tide of astonishment. How could she have Hved this much of her life without having a single glimmer as to what it was all about? Hadn't she ever fallen in love, or wanted something bad enough to work for it and earn it? Hadn't she ever felt for a single moment the simple desire to be comfortable? Excitement was fine, jov was fine, but they hadn't been invented to be servea up three meals a day. The stretches in between represented life, too, and meaningful life. David said, "I give up. We don t talk the same language."

Jody said suspiciously, *Tfou criticizing my English now?'^

"No, Jody," he said and sat down.

*1 could have gotten all Outstandings if I'd wanted them."

"Sure you could ve. Simmer down. You just didn't want them."

By some accident he was getting imder her skin now. Spitefully, she saic^ "And if I really wanted to fix you good, all I have to do is yank up the Venetian blinds and give the neighbors a big fat peek at me in my undies. And you sitting there in your bathrobe. There's some kids out there playing ball in the street, you know."

He swallowed another soothing mouthful of bourbon. His voice came out calm. "Why would you really want to fix me good, Jody? I'm the same fellow who tried to help you this morning."

She stared at him, face contorted. *1 don't know," she said under her breath. "I don't know."

In that brief silence she was confused and vulnerable, and he wondered if she were entirely sane. The constant probing for excitement, perhaps that was a psychotic trait. And her sadistic streak—*teasing" she called it—but her antics while he was on the telephone surpassed mere playfulness; they were vicious and, most disturbing of all, pointless.

A voice spoke importantly from the television set.

"Direct from our news room, the seven forty-five roundup. Your reporter, Dirk Hadley, brought to you by . . /* David turned to Hsten, his interest caught. Today's newspaper hadn't arrived but here was his chance to find out.

Jody moved swiftly to turn off the set and close the console doors.

"Heyl" He bounded over and pushed her away. "I want to see that." He opened the doors and cHcked the set on again, fuming as the screen slowly glowed to life. David was on his knees, waiting. Then the image snapped into being and he found nimself face to face with Jody. This morning's Jody, mouse-haired— an official photograph. Sullen and unsmiling, her picture gazed back at him.

". . . brown hair, yellow-brown eyes," the announcer's smooth voice related. "So the search continues for seventeen-year-old Jody Drew, who escaped last night from Juvenile Hall after setting fire to the girls' detention quarters and stabbing a matron who tried to stop her. The matron, Mrs. Clara Eckert, forty-six, is in critical condition at County Hospital but is expected to recover . . ."

Mouth open, David turned his head to stare at the girl. Jody was hghting a cigarette, pretending nonchalance, but her hands were trembling. She bobbed her head to duck the smoke and said, "Lousy picture, isn't it?"

". . . with a long record of offenses, the escaped girl was being held in the Hall on charges of possession and peddling of narcotics and was to have been turned over to the Adult Authority today. Anyone with knowledge of Jody Drew's whereabouts is instructed to get in touch with the sheriff's office immediately. She is possibly armed and known to be dangerous." The announcer paused to take a puff on the cigarette that sponsored his program. Jody imitated him. "In Washington, the Pentagon announces that a new—"

David turned off the set. He rose slowly to his feet. "That story about your father, the petty theft, and all that was a He, wasn't it?"

"It worked, didn't it?" said Jody.

*Treah, I guess so. If I'd had any idea of the truth, I*d never have ..." He shook his head impatiently, trying to get the truth in order. He murmured, "They make it sound so duU, the news programs. Yet there's a real woman in the hospital who's been bleeding and wondering if she was going to die and—"

She got in my wayl" snapped Jody. "You try being locked up some time, see how you like it, big mouthi

"Just an accidental matter of inches, fractions of inches," he said, puzzled. He didn't know whether he was trying to explain all this to her or to himself. "You could De wanted for murder now. Just a matter of luck."

"Oh, I'm just plain lucky," drawled Jody sarcastically. *What else do you want to know, where I got the knife? I lifted it at dinner. Why I can't get help from the bosses? Because I rate Hke bat-crap now that I been picked up."

He walked over to her and lifted her chin and inspected her face. She didn't understand, and what she (fidn't understand scared her. She backed away. He said sofdy, "You know, this morning I thought you were kind of pretty. Not in a sex way, uie way your cheap littie mind works. Just a pretty young girl, like my httle girl wiU be some day. But wnen you know what's inside, well, you're not pretty at aU any more, Jody. It all shows in your face once you know about it."

*Tlease don't say I'm ugly." Her mouth began to quiver but she didn't cry. She wheeled. "I'm sorry you had to find out, David. It sounds worse than it is, you know? That's why I threw away tonight's paper so you wouldn't read about me. We spent a whole day together now. You must know I'm not bad, really."

"You don't know how Htde sense you make sometimes. You're disconnected somewhere. What comes out of your mouth has no relation to the facts."

* what do you mean?"

He sighed. "It doesn't matter, Jody. The point is I m going to have to txmi you in."

She grinned suddenly. "No, you won't."

The door bell rang, as startling as a clap of thunder. In that instant David Patton despised himself. AU his brave talk, all the guts he assumed he had, he could

feel them melt down inside. All his fine principles— they were for when he was marooned alone with the girl. But with the chime of the door bell came the terrible recollection that there was an outside world of other harsher facts.

Somehow he made it to the door and opened the brass peephole. His frightened eye stared into the faces of Sid and Helen Wright. "Oh, my God . . ." he mumbled. "I forgot . . r It was eight o'clock and he was supposed to go to Tijuana. This was to be a gay evening out.

He looked around wildly at Jody. She was still grinning Hke a red-mouthed skull. She twiddled her cigarette and whispered, "Well, lover, here's your chance. Turn me in/'

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Chapter Six

He had to say something to Sid and Helen out there but he couldn't think of anything and anyway his mouth felt swabbed dry. Sid, thank God, spoke first. "Hi, gonna let us in?"

David caught his breath in a gasp. "1 can't I have to get my pants on."

Helen smiled at his eye in the peephole.

He said, *1 was just going to taJce a shower. Can you wait a second? IVe been mowing those damn weeds all afternoon." He closed the peephole.

Jody giggled. She was coming to open the door and he pushed her back, holding her by the elbows. "Friends of yours?" she whisperea. "Ill make a deal with you."

"What kind of deal?"

"See? You're willing to bargain, aren't you? Well, you just go ahead and let your friends in. You want to turn me over to the cops so bad, here's yoin: big diddling chance. I won't run, I won't fight, I won't even he. I'll tell your friends exactly the truth about you and me. You're hurting my elbows, David."

He let go of her. She leaned fondly against him.

"But you've got to tell the truth, too," she said softly. "Like you've got to show them your scratched-up chest. And no fair putting any pants on. LfCt them in rignt now. Let's see if your friends got any cleaner minds than my friends." She smiled sweetly and, almost as a casual afterthought, said, "You nice-part-of-town bastard."

He pusned her half-naked Tbody away from his. She had been undoing the sash of his robe. "For God sakes, let me thinkl" A hundred curdled pieces of thought churned roimd in his brain and he tried to decide nis next move.

The front door bell rang again and kept on chiming. Sid was leaning against it, kidding around. Sure, he

could let them in right this minute and start the long explanation of the truth. And while he talked, even providing there was no lying interruptions from Jody, . which he doubted, they would be looking. They^d be ' seeing him in his robe and this voluptuous minor in her underthings and they wouldn't hear a word he was saying. If, instead of the Wrights, it had been the poHce at the door, he thought he might be able to face the consequences in one blind what-the-hell moment. But when he pictured Sid's sly grin, Helen's cool stare, the story they would tell afterward ... He couldn't go through with it.

Huskily, he ordered Jody, "Get away from the door. Hide somewhere till I can get rid of them."

Her eyes ghttered with triumph. "Sure you don't want me to invite them in personally, lover? I make a jazzy hostess and we could have a real party-party—"

In a despairing gesture of surrender, he waved her toward the hallway. Jody took her own sweet time. Before leaving the room—and he reaHzed for the first time that she could think faster than he could—she strolled to the coflFee table. She collected her drink, its glass rim tinged with Unstick, the ashtray that held butts also stained red at me tips, and the second pack of cigarettes. Then she made her way to the bathroom and closed the door.

Sid's heavy-handed sense of humor was still chiming the door bell relentlessly. David ran for the back bedroom and stumbled into the first pair of trousers he could find. He didn't bother with shorts and he couldn't locate his bedroom slippers and the robe would serve to cover his chest if he kept the lapels in place. Barefoot, breathless, he made it back to the front door and flung it open.

Sid looked him up and down, grinning. "Boy, if it takes you that long for that result, how do you ever make it to work?"

David said, "Sorry you had to wait," and stood aside to let the pair enter.

Helen smiled and said, "Hi," as she passed him. She wore a pale gray dress, a tubular affair that made her look more serpentine than ever. Sid, in his plaid suit.

on the other hand, resembled a giant version of a well-scrubbed httle boy. He flipped the Hght switch as he came in. "What've you been doing in the dark?"

"Yeah, I guess it is a httle after sundown. I haven't been keeping track of time today at all."

"Oh, that's all right," Helen said. "Well wait for you."

"Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to back out on this evening. I'm terribly sorry but—well, I've got a bad headache, may be coming down with a cold."

Sid pursed his hps in disappointment and Helen said, "Ah, that's a shame, Dave." She was drifting around the Hving room as if on a tour of inspection. David watched her uneasily, wondering if she would notice the ring of wet on the coffee table where Jody's glass had stood. Then it came to him that he was magnifying signs and suspicions out of all true proportions. The absurdly tiny matter of the damp circle merely meant he hadnt set his own glass down in the same place. It meant nothing to the Wrights, only to his own guilty conscience, because he knew what was hiding in the bathroom.

And he was so afraid he wouldn't be beUeved that he stammered slightly. "My own fool fault. I worked aU afternoon out in the heat and I guess the sun was a Httle too much for me. I thought I'd turn in early."