Chapter 7
"JUST TAKE IT EASY AND SIT BACK DOWN, warden," Joe snapped, "and nobody is going to get hurt."
"Joe," I cried. "What is this?" He shot me a dark frown. "It's a break-out, Mary...."
The conversation we had had in the dispensary filtered crazily back into my mind. Joe had been worried that I knew something. So this was it ... an escape attempt! The implications of it terrified me-not for my own sake, but for Joe's.
"Joe ... don't do it! You'll only get caught-you'll only make things worse!"
A small curling smile of scorn tore at Joe's lips. "Worse! How the hell could things be worse, Mary? You don't know what it's like in this hell hole. You just got here."
"Joe...."
"Forget it, Mary. We've gone this far and we're not turning back." We?
The word was no more than out of Joe's mouth when another figure pushed his way into the room. He was a blond young boy with thick shoulders and cold, blue eyes. He couldn't have been more than nineteen. He raked his eyes around the room like a machine gun, settling abruptly on me.
"This her?" he snapped.
Joe nodded. Our eyes met again at once.
"Sorry, Mary," Joe breathed, "but you've got to come along. There's no time to talk about it, just go with Todd.".
The blond young man still had those cold blue eyes on me-and a pistol leveled at my throat. A small, dirty grin distorted his face.
"C'mon, baby," he husked. "You and me are going for a little walk."
"We're all going," Joe corrected. "Just show her to the warden's car, Todd ... and no fooling around with her. She's my girl."
The blond shrugged with exaggerated disinterest. "Who said anything about touching her," he parried. "But you can't kill a guy for looking ... and thinking."
"Just make sure that's all you do," Joe snarled. "Go with him, Mary."
"I won't," I gasped, still utterly bewildered by what was happening.
Joe leveled his gaze at me again, the pistol stabbing the air in front of the warden's face.
"Look, Mary, I haven't got time to argue. You're coming with us ... King has been hit. Monk winged him before we ... before we stopped him. King's arm is like hamburger. He needs medical attention."
"Joe ... I ... I'm not a doctor...."I argued, stubbornly.
The blond grunted. "She's stalling ... goddammit ... I told you she'd stall. We ain't got time to be nice...." He lunged at me, and his hand shot out at my arm. He caught me in a vise-like grip, and twisted my arm painfully behind my back. "Now move, baby. Work those sweet hips but fast!"
I cried out with the pain.
"Turn her loose, Todd!" Joe shouted, his voice flashing anger. "You touch her one more time and I'll blow your damned head off!"
The blond released my arm with a threatening glare at both me and Joe. "Now, look," he began, loudly.
"Cool it, Todd. We're jumpy and we're wasting valuable time." Joe whipped his eyes back to me. "AH right, Mary, now go with him. I told you I was sorry-but there's no way out. You're just making things worse for me. And Todd has a jittery gun finger-I can't be responsible for the Warden if...."
"Go with them," Stella moaned, her face bloated from weeping. "They killed Monk-and they'll kill us, too, if you don't! You done enough damage here!"
Stella's sudden charge that I was responsible for what had happened angered me. I wanted to protest, but I felt helpless. Rather than endanger their lives, I decided to do as Joe asked.
"Take her out to the warden's car," Joe said to the one named Todd; and to me he commanded: "See what you can do for King. There's a first-aid kit in the glove compartment of the car. He glanced at Warden Baker. "Right, Warden?"
Warden Baker nodded glumly from the prison of his chair.
"And on your way back, Todd, bring that rope," Joe added.
I was carried along with Todd through the hallway of the house, and out into the darkness of the yard. The warden's car was waiting there, the motor running. In the back seat a huge man was slumped, he looked up at me with dark, cruel eyes. He was holding one hand against his right arm.
"Take care of him," Todd snapped, shoving me into the back seat. "And no tricks. King still has a gun, and he'll blow your guts out if he has to."
My heart pounded as the door was slammed behind me. I waited until Todd got some rope out of the front seat and disappeared back into the house.
"Hurry...." the man in the car husked. "The damn pain ... the pain...."
I bent over the front seat of the car and rummaged in the glove compartment for the first-aid kit. It was a small kit, but it had bandages and iodine and tape. I settled the things on the seat between us, and pulled his hand away from the wound. When I tore open the shirt, he yelped with pain, "Is this a gun wound?" I asked.
"Knife ... damned Monk ... bastard had a knife on him."
"It's a deep wound," I said. "You ought to see a doctor."
A contemptuous snarl erupted from deep in the man's throat. His beetle brows converged in an angry frown. "You're the only doctor I intend to see," he breathed. "You fix me up good ... and fast."
By the time I had dosed the wound with iodine and wrapped the arm with bandages, Joe and Todd had returned. They leaped into the car and slammed the doors hard.
"Don't Joe," I begged, putting one hand on his shoulder. "Think about what you're doing...."
"We been thinking, baby," the blond barked, turning those icy blue eyes on me. "We ain't been doing a thing but thinking for six months-and now we're breaking out of this hog pen!"
My protests were drowned in the grinding hiss of rubber screaming on the graveled drive, and the roar of the car's powerful engine.
I don't know how long we drove. It was a nightmare of hissing curves and dark shadows. Joe drove half the time with only the dimmers on-until the frantic near misses with trees and curbs forced him to put on the lights completely.
"We'll never make it," the wounded man growled. "I'll bet the warden is out of them ropes already."
"Not the way we tied them," Todd laughed. "He'd have to be a sonofabitchin' acrobat to "wriggle out before daylight."
The man named King cursed. "I told you we should've knocked him off-just like Monk."
"Shut up," Joe snapped.
A cold shudder went through my body. So they had killed Monk. They had murdered a man to get out of jail. All my hopes for Joe seemed to vaporize with the news. I sat in the corner of the backseat, too frightened to move.
We drove for what seemed hours. Finally we passed a few lights and I realized that we were coming into a city.
"North here!" King commanded.
The car swerved on two wheels, throwing us like rag dolls against each other.
"You're gonna kill us, dammit!" Todd bawled.
The car sped up the dark streets. Blocks raced by, one after another. As King called out directions, Joe responded. A turn right, then left, then two more right turns. Even if I had known what city we were in, I could never have remembered the complex maneuvers of the car. I was lost, like a leaf swirling on angry waters.
"Here it is!" King announced at last. "Rita's got the garage open. Drive in there and cut your lights!"
Joe did as he was told. The car knifed into the gaping mouth of a darkened garage and came to a jolting stop. Joe snapped off the lights and killed the engine. I was aware that somebody was yanking down the door of the garage behind us.
"Okay-everybody out!" Joe breathed.
King winced with pain as he shouldered his way out of the car behind me. He was the largest man I had ever seen, an animal of a man, towering over all of us.
A figure joined us in the garage-a woman.
"King," she husked. She slid her arms around his waist and kissed him wetly on the mouth, "Hi, baby," King grunted. "You got the house ready?"
"All ready, honey."
"Okay-let's go inside."
He stumbled through the darkness into the small, compact kitchen. When the door was shut somebody snapped on a light. We huddled-like pursued animals, afraid that any moment a hunter, gun in hand, would appear to fire pell mell into us. At last the tension subsided and we began to breathe more freely.
I saw the woman glaring at me, her arms slumped around King's waist and shoulders.
She couldn't have been more than twenty, but she looked harried and used. She had a hard look around the eyes, and the cheap, silk blouse she wore outlined the sensual jut of her breasts. She had obviously dolled herself up for the return of her boy friend-King. She drew her mouth down in a disapproving sneer at my presence. She yanked her mouth up to King's face.
"Who the hell is she?" the woman demanded.
"Just a nurse; we brung her along for my arm," King muttered.
"Oh, God-I didn't know you was hurt, King," the woman moaned, her fingers making sudden fluttering gestures over the bandaged arm.
King pulled away. "I'll live," he grunted. "How about something to eat, baby? I feel like I could eat a horse."
"I got your favorite," Rita pealed. "Chicken. I cooked it myself. You remember how you always liked my fried chicken, King?"
"Sure, sure-let's have some of that. You got any beer-any whiskey?"
Rita smiled with a kind of phony domesticity. "I did just like you asked, King. I got the place stocked to last a month."
King fondled her with his good hand. His thick, hairy fingers traced the outline of her ripe breasts, teasing the pointed outlines of her thick nipples. She giggled and tweaked his ear. I looked away in disgust. The woman caught my reaction.
"Get her," Rita hissed, the sting of anger riding through her voice. "Miss Chastity Belt! Why the hell did you have to drag her along? I mean, I could have took care of you, King...."
"She's Joe's piece," King muttered.
"Sure she is," Todd husked, grinning.
I saw Todd looking at me with veiled lust smoldering in his eyes.
"All right," Joe said, quietly. "Let's settle down to some kind of organization here. King, you and Rita decide where we bunk. Todd, you get your ear glued to a radio to see what kind of stink this is going to make."
"Sure, Joe," King said.
Rita led the way into the living room of the small house. The blinds were down and the drapes were closed. Not a thread of light would be able to come in or escape from the whole house. It was obvious that Rita had been in on the planning of the escape from the very beginning. She was a part of it. This was, in effect, the "hide-out."
Rita pointed at a door. "That's where me and King stay. The rest of you...."
"You're wrong, Rita," Joe cut in. "Mary and I will take that room. You and King stay out here with
Todd."
"Hey, what is this...." Rita began.
"It's okay, Rita," King muttered. "Joe's the boss."
"like hell he is! King, you told me you was gonna run this break-out. You said...."
"You got your wires crossed, Rita," King breathed.
"Well, no bitch in imagine underwear is gonna...."
Rita didn't get the sentence finished. King slapped her hard on the mouth with his left hand. She reeled, spilling into a cheap coffee table, sprawling on her hips. I stared in horror at the insensible, brutal violence of the huge man. Joe and Todd said nothing.
Rita picked herself up, whimpering, staunching the little trickle of blood at the edge of her cut lip. She moaned, tears dribbling from her eyes. "You shouldn't have done that, King," she blubbered. "You had no call to...."
"Then you oughta listen to me when I talk, baby," King said, gruffly. "Joe's the boss. He planned the whole damned caper. What he says goes." He glanced heavily at Todd. "Right, kid?"
"Sure," Todd agreed, a scornful little grin accentuating his thin allegiance.
"All right," Joe said. "That's settled. Mary, go on to the room. I'm sure Rita has something that will fit you if you want to change."
Rita gave me a reluctant but somewhat defeated glance. "Sure. C'mon, honey, I'll show you the room."
The room was a small, crowded bedroom, obviously the only bedroom in the house. There was a half-size bed with a rumpled pink bedspread and a silk pillow with frilly lace sewed along the edges. A table and an unmatching chair, and on the wall a very bad print of The Last Supper. It was the kind of bedroom that reflected the sleazy bad taste of the young girl named Rita.
"This is it," she breathed. "Take it or leave it."
"Thank you," I said. "I'm sorry that King made...."
"Look, sweetie," Rita hissed, her eyes hardening suddenly with fresh ire. "King is my stud-and you keep your claws out of him."
I stared at her, incredulous. "I can assure you that I have no intention...."
"Well, just remember what I said. King's more man than six of your Joe. I catch you batting your eyelashes at him and I'll rip your hair out and ram it down your throat."
Her eyes were still flashing, her breasts heaving with the age-old fear of a jungle instinct: the female protecting her male. I felt sorry for her.
?All right," I said. "I understand."
Her pride had been salvaged. The sadistic slap that King had given her was past history now. She had done a little pushing around of her own.
Turning from her, I glanced at the bedroom door. There was a flimsy bolt-action lock, the dime-store variety. But it was better than nothing. I had the impulse to lock it the moment Rita left, and escape out the window. But I knew I wouldn't. Something held me back.
And then I realized that I was no different-no better, no worse-than Rita. I, too, had a man to protect.
And leaving him now would be the worst thing in the world for both of us.
"Course, it ain't King you got to be worried about," Rita was saying, her breath coming in short, thick gasps. "It's that Todd. He's the one you gotta watch."
I measured the look in her eyes. There was something of fear and desire boiling there; it was impossible to separate the mixture.
"What about Todd?" I said, hesitantly. She gave a short, sensual laugh. "Honey,-what do you think that bastard was in hock for, anyway."
"I ... I don't know."
"Well, not for what King was. King was in for safecracking. He's good, the best-only some fink told the cops about his last job and...." She broke off, as if the memory of it was too painful to think about. "Well, anyhow, he's out now, and he's gonna stay out if I have anything to do with it."
"Todd," I insisted, nervously. "You were going to tell me why Todd was in prison."
"Same as why your boy friend checked in, honey-for rape."
"Rape?" I echoed.
"Yeah, for rape. Only he wasn't so nice about it, from what I hear. Nothing statutory about what he did. He left the girls half-dead. Did it several times before they caught him." Her eyes were liquid with the delicious terror of it all, as if she half yearned for the same kind of fate. "So take my advice, honey," she rasped. "Don't ever let yourself get alone with that young stud-not if you value what's left of your damned virginity!"