Chapter 11
Gretchen wasn't waving her naked tits at me as she usually did. That flashing glint was a wicked-looking Beretta automatic.
"Put it down, Gretchen baby-it's only me, your Philly boy! Now that you've caught me working overtime, how about us stripping for a quickie?" I said, hoping to distract her.
"Forget it, you miserable boy scout!" she rocked me with a gravelly voice. "This is a real gun, and it's going to give you some hot lead instead of hot pussy!"
The seals of self-deception dropped from my eyes as I sensed her true character.
No wonder, except once or twice when we had fucked like mad, she never had seemed quite real to me. The girl I thought I knew, the dainty lass of the modulated voice, the Emily Post manners, was a sham.
This obvious moll, her eyes as hard as the gun she almost surely would use to kill me, was the real Gretchen.
One thing became very clear in this moment of truth. This Gretchen I would never marry ... not even if I lived, that is ... and the other no longer existed, not for me.
But where and how had I been so deluded? Was this part of the reason my grandfather had urged me to marry Gretchen? Did he still carry a torch for the long-dead whore? But where had my common sense been? I had been screwed, blued, and tattooed like a veritable trusting virgin. Man, how stupid could I get?
I still crouched as I had been when I first saw her. I had started to rise but hurriedly slumped back into this position when I stared into the muzzle of her gun. I shifted, uncomfortably. Every muscle in my legs was beginning to ache.
"Get up," Gretchen said contemptuously.
Dozens of questions crowded to my lips, but I didn't dare open my mouth. If there was going to be any conversation now, at this crucial moment, Gretchen would have to start it.
"You sneak thief!" she blazed. "I know you weren't after money. You stood to get plenty of that. You were after the diary, weren't you?"
I hesitated, and she took a step forward, the gun lifted now, the handle menacing me, in a different, but still in a deadly way.
"Answer me, or I'll crack open your skull!" she almost screamed.
Man, and I had thought Vince was tough. He couldn't hold a candle to the new ... or was it new ... Gretchen.
As her voice rose, so did a slight hope in me. Maybe the watchman would hear. Hell, if he didn't what were we paying him for? Gretchen seemed to have read my mind.
"If you expect Andy to save you, forget it," she said. "He was my mother's brother. My father still lives for her memory. Anyone with her blood in his veins can do no wrong in my father's eyes."
"But he wanted you to marry me!" I stared at her as though I never had seen her before. "You never wanted to, did you? If you rate so high with your father, why didn't you just tell him you preferred someone else?"
Gretchen face softened. In fact, she almost looked like the Gretchen I had been seeing.
"He rates plenty high with me, too," she said, quietly. "I was willing to go along with the prestige marriage bit just to please him."
She stared at me, her mouth twisted with rage and grief.
"But you had to spoil it, didn't you?" she grated. "You couldn't be satisfied with a hell of a good deal, one better than you ever could have come up with any other way, could you?"
There were a few things I had to say. If she was going to rub me out anyway, what did I have to lose?
"How did you know I was coming here?" I asked.
The only one who would have known or guessed that would be Babbs. My heart felt like lead. Surely not ... no, I just couldn't believe a thing like that of Babbs.
Gretchen's cold eyes mocked mine. "I was coming back from a date with Vince. We rented a place where we could make fuck with some privacy ... after Babbs fouled us up on using her pad."
Her eyes glinted with scorn ... even with hate. "And we would have kept right on meeting and fucking each other if you and I had gotten married."
I could hear her silent "so there". Actually, it was almost amusing ... except for that damn gun. If she wanted Vince's dick so bad, why didn't she just defy the old man and marry him? The unspoken question hung in the air until I had to ask it.
"I couldn't hurt my father that way," Gretchen said, real pain in her face. "So long as Vince knows it's him I really love, he's willing to let me humor Dad. Sometimes, of course, he gets out of line, like he did with you the night he worked you over. Then I have to soften him up again."
"What good will it do you to kill me?" I asked, not only stalling for time, but out of actual curiosity. "You'll just be taking a chance on jail for the rest of your life."
"No, I won't. After I shoot you ... and it won't be here ... that would be too dangerous ... I'll take you to an area known for brawls and killings. It's not far, and the place averages at least one unsolved murder to every block."
Not that I was anxious, and I might be a fool to open my mouth, but I had to know. "Why not here?"
"Possibility of blood on the floor, possibility of a bullet hole I couldn't hide, or somebody just might see me drag you out. You'll be a mite heavy."
She eyed me speculatively. I could feel every inch of my flesh grow as cold as though someone were rubbing it with ice cubes. Brother! And this was the same cunt who had lain, warm and sweet, in my arms.
"There's a silencer on the gun so I won't have to worry about noise," she told me.
I refrained from a sarcastic, goody, goody.
"Where are we going?" I inquired.
She smiled with her lips, but not with her eyes.
"Out to the place where Vince and I tryst," she said, coolly.
Well, that's an interesting new word for it, I thought.
Wonder how many broads will know what I'm getting at when I say, "Let's tryst."
"It's in a woodsy area," Gretchen continued, as though I ought to find the subject enormously fascinating. "I can scuff the leaves over where I have to drag you, and if there is any blood, nobody will be able to see it."
I gazed at her in real horror, not just at the thought of impending death but at the cool, crisp way in which she could speak of dragging my lifeless body, of my spilled blood....
Maybe death would be preferable to marriage to a deadly bitch such as she.
She moved restlessly, then backed out of her father's office into mine and stood slightly to one side.
"Go on out," she directed, "but I'm warning you. One move in my direction and you've had it, right that minute. And I won't try for a fast, painless shot."
I shrugged. As bargains go, it wasn't much, but the alternative was worse. Careful to keep a wide berth of what I had once considered superbly enticing grade A cunt, I made for the door.
"Open it," she ordered. "If you see anyone coming, keep still. Nothing and no one can save you."
I wouldn't have banked on that, but I preserved a discreet silence.
She pointed to her car parked right behind mine.
"And I'll drive," she stated. "I've read of cases where desperate men have pressed the gas pedal down, swerved like mad, and so forth, when they figure they have nothing to lose. Even driving, I'll keep my gun aimed. I can do it, so for a few minutes extra to live, don't try anything smart. It won't work."
Big deal, I thought, but again I said nothing. I was holding on hard to an old cliche, where there is life, there is hope.
If we were in my car, I could hope we would run out of gas, but using Gretchen's, I cancelled out that possibility.
The ride was a silent one. We drove clear to the outskirts of town, then Gretchen turned down a side road with which I was unfamiliar.
We went down a long, bumpy stretch, so narrow the weeds met in the middle in spots. Or maybe it just seemed long because it was so damned rough.
Finally, she turned again, this time onto a private side road. There were lots of big trees and a mass of bushes. Was death lurking behind the trunk of an oak or a pine?
"Get out," Gretchen ordered curtly.
I felt numb. This must be it. The end of the line. There was the hardness of metal against my ribs, and I moved.
It would be hopeless to try to reason. Clearly this was a madwoman, wild for the cock she couldn't legally have from the only man she really wanted.
I made one last desperate try.
"Why kill me?" I made my voice as loud as I dared. Why I didn't know. This was one of the wildest, loneliest spots I had ever seen. I could see part of a cabin a short way along the path, with what looked like a light left glimmering in one room ... or maybe it was a reflection from the moon.
"I'll bow out of the picture gracefully," I continued. "I'll even marry you and never touch you, if that's what you want. If Vince gets you pregnant, I'll give the baby my name, just to go along with your father."
My voice trailed away into nothingness. I had been searching her eyes, but they didn't soften.
"I don't believe you," she said flatly. Her voice rose. "You're a sneak! I'd have gone through with it, but you had to snoop! You couldn't let well enough alone. Okay, we've talked just about long enough. There isn't a damn thing left to say that will change anything. Brace yourself. You're going to get it."
I stiffened, expecting pain, then nothingness, but a sound intruded.
It was the crackling of bushes, persumably being pushed aside, the rustling of weeds. I never had known this could sound so much like music ... like a symphony, even. Someone was coming!
"Gretchen!" It was Vince.
He eyed me startled.
"I heard the sound of your car coming up the road," he said. "Then I heard voices so I hurried down to see what the hell was going on. What's with him?"
"I have to kill him," Gretchen said calmly and reasonably, the way a normal woman might say, "I have to sweep the floor," or, "We'll have pot roast for dinner." She continued, "He snooped."
"A-a-h," Vince protested. "Don't you think that's kind of extreme? What harm can the poor kook do us, really? Why don't you just let him go with the full understanding that, if he ever gets out of line, he's going to wish I had let you kill him? If you just let him keep that namby-pamby job of his that pays better than anything else a jerk like him could get, he won't open his yap."
I couldn't get steamed up over his description of my personality, but his reasoning really got to me. Boy after the beating he had given me not too long ago, this was a surprise. Whatever the liquor was that had softened up this gorilla, it could have my endorsement any time.
"But I don't trust him," Gretchen said. Damn, the bloodthirsty little bitch seemed to be determined to kill something.
I tried mental telepathy. Why not an owl? I urged silently. Or a rabbit, maybe?
As they stared blissfully into each other's eyes, they seemed to forget about me.
"Hey!" I said. "Would you two lovebirds mind telling me how to get back to town?"
It was pretty clear they wouldn't be going anywhere, except, maybe, into their old fuck routine.
Vince turned and showed his white even teeth in a nasty smile.
"Start using foot-power," Vince said, with a smug grin. "And if I were you," he added, "I'd be thankful that I was a live stud, instead of a dead duck!"
Noticing the dissatisfied frown on Gretchen's face at his words, I figured maybe he was right. I better get out of there before either of these weirdos changed their mind. I wouldn't put it past either of them to start using my most precious personal possession in a little target practic-just for kicks.
I started on my long hike, not looking behind me once. It might have tempted Gretchen, made her feel sorry I was slipping away still in one piece. But at three A.M. it started to rain. Wet and miserable, I looked down at my blistering feet.
"What the hell, I should have let them shoot me!" I said in a real blue funk.