Chapter 9
It would have been hard to time it bet-ter. Earlier, they might have been distracted by his presence, might have noticed that he was there at the doorway, watching them. Later he would have missed part of the show, and it was not the sort of show you second-acted by choice. You couldn't come in for the last reel alone, like with a movie, because you couldn't stay around later to see the show over from the beginning. It didn't work that way.
So he had timed it well. He stood at the open door and stared, eyes wide, and he saw them, and they did not see him. The blood raced through his veins and every atom of his being was charged with lust. He wanted to throw himself onto the soiled bed, to join them, to join their desperate games. But he forced the desire down and made himself look but not touch.
It was something to see.
Hell, it was a tourist attraction. It was the eighth wonder of the modern world and it made the other seven wonders a little less wonderful in comparison.
And Fallon watched.
They had not quite gotten down to brass tacks yet. The blonde, the lithe ash blonde, was lying on her back on the bed. Her eyes were closed and her face was contorted. She was breathing shallowly but regularly. She was mostly naked, almost completely naked. She still had her panties on, a pair of lacy black things, and as long as she wore them only her hair dresser would know for sure whether the ash blonde hair was hers or not. But there were other things that Fallon knew about her.
He knew she was soft and creamy from head to toe. He knew that her little girl breasts, firm and pink-tipped, fitted neatly into Jan's dexterous hands. And he knew that he was going to have one hell of a time with the little quail.
The little quail, he thought. It would make a good title for a sexy book. The Little Quail. Or a detective story-"The Case of the Little Quail." Or-
But it was no time for thinking. It was a time for watching, and there was plenty to watch. Because Jan was nearly naked, too, and he had never seen Jan unclothed, and that was worth watching. Jan still had her bra and her panties on but that was all, and the bra didn't hide much. It had a hard time keeping her big breasts with a bra than you could catch a hurricane in a flimsy little bra, and you could no more harness those breasts with a bra than you could catch a hurricane in a paper bag. It was hard for him to believe that Jan was really a Lesbian, even now, even with what she was doing before his hungry eyes. You just didn't see Lesbians with boobs like hers. They were really incredible.
The position was an interesting one. The little blonde was lying on her back, her eyes closed. Jan was kneeling over her, her buttocks rested neatly upon the blonde's knees. And Jan's hand were manipulating the blonde's little breasts, playing with them, teasing them awake.
She kept up the teasing for a long time. With the tips of her index fingers she drew circles around the nipples, first clockwise and then counterclockwise. She pulled and tugged, pressed them, and poked them like doorbells. Her hands gripped them and squeezed and relaxed, flexing the lush flesh and making the blonde dizzy with desire.
Then, slowly, she changed her position. She straightened out, her legs back behind her now, her body lowering itself gently upon the body of the blonde. She kissed the blonde's lips open and Jan's tongue slipped between them, lighting little fires of incandescent passion wherever it touched. The blonde began moving now, her body an orgy in liquid grace, rolling just enough to rub against Jan magnificently.
The blonde's small hands crept around Jan's back, unhooked her bra. Jan drew herself up and the blonde took the damned bra off and threw it aside and opened her eyes long enough to catch a glimpse of Jan's breasts. The blonde gasped and Fallon knew why. Jan's breasts were extraordinary. They were as white and as firm as ivory, each tipped wrth a little cherry nipple. And Jan lowered herself again, slowly, and her breasts came in contact with the breasts of the blonde. She moved so that her nipples brushed back and forth across the blonde's.
The effect was startling. The blonde started to pant and moan, her body arching lustily, her hips rolling. Jan moved away and pulled off the blonde's panties, then rolled momentarily to one side and let the blonde perform the same service for her. Fallon looked at both of them and his mouth watered. The blonde was a real blonde and Jan was a real brunette, and they were both lovely.
"Oh, lover!" the blonde moaned.
Once more Jan tossed her passion-wracked body to the blonde girl. They were naked now, and they pressed together all the way, mouth to mouth and breasts to breasts. They moved in unison, slowly.
More.
More.
Jan moved away, inched slowly off from the blonde. The girl seemed ready to protest, but then Jan lowered herself slightly on the bed and her lips found the blonde's throat. She kissed and nibbled, and her pink tongue stroked the blonde's silken flesh.
Lower.
Fallon's palms were damp with sweat. His hands had clenched themselves into hard fists and the muscles in his calves were held so taut that they ached dully. His heart was going like a triphammer and he thought his lungs would burst. He had never seen anything like this, and nothing that he had ever seen had ever had this sort of effect upon him. It was more exciting to watch these two magnificent women in action than it would be to make actual love to most of the women on earth. They were extraordinary, terrific, great.
Jan's tongue was doing delicious things now. It stole into the deep valley between the girls breasts and bathed the spot softly and thoroughly. She moved to one side, washing one of the girl's breasts and making her squeal with passion. Jan's mouth closed over it until the girl gasped with lust. Then Jan's mouth found the other one and repeated the process.
She worked on the girl's breasts industriously, nibbling at them, kissing the sweet flesh. And the girl was going out of her mind now. She couldn't keep her body still. Her arms twitched at her sides, now reaching for Jan, now flailing at empty air, never resting, always moving.
More.
More.
And Jan moved lower. Her mouth never stopped doing its wild work. She rubbed her cheek against the girl's middle, flicked out her tongue. She planted a hundred kisses over every square inch of the girl.
Fallon was torn between two stools. He wanted them to hurry but he wanted it to go on forever at the same time. He was, on the one hand, anxious to get into the act, to bruise and ruin and rape the ash blonde. But at the same time he wanted to see this, to watch it for a very long time. It was the greatest show on earth and one look at it would make the circus fold its tent and get the hell out of town.
Jan was crouching low on the bed now, her body doubled up, her mouth against the blonde. She kissed the skin there. It was soft and it was creamy and it was lush, and it was evidently sensitive, too, because the blonde moved like a worm on a hook, babbling incoherently and making wild and weird little sounds.
Jan used her mouth.
Her lips.
Her hands moved, pinpointing the target. Her lips took aim and caught hold, and the world began to move Like crazy, and the blonde made a sound unlike anything Fallon had ever heard in his life, a long low eerie gasp that tore at his heart and guts. The blonde flailed at the air with anxious hands, and Jan gave a quick flip and turned around, and the blonde's furious hands caught hold of Jan and the blonde's mouth aimed and struck.
Swaying.
Soaring.
Moving fast.
Fast.
Faster.
Faster!
They had found the golden rule and were putting it into practice. Both of them were getting very well done, and their lust was overpowering in the little room. They moved and swayed and dipped and soared, faster and faster and faster, and in the doorway a naked man stood watching them with aching passion.
Faster-
Faster!
With the bed rocking and the world duplicating the motions of the bed, slipping off its axis and coming un-glued, and with the room soggy and wild and mad, and with the building, the condemned building, seeming more likely to fall now from the fury of their lust than from the blows of the wrecker's hammer.
Faster-
Faster!
With lips and hands, fingers and breasts, legs and hips. With all the sweet parts of two sweet bodies locked in combat.
Faster.
Faster!
With the world leaping and diving and shouting for joy, and with the crisis rushing at them full speed like an Olympic sprinter charging for the tape at the finish line. With the crisis rushing and reaching for them and grabbing at them, and with them embracing it, and with the world shifting and cracking and buckling in the full and awesome fury of gratified desire. An explosion, a bomb, a starburst-all of that, all at once, onward and upward to the crest of the very world. The rockets gave with their red flare, and the bombs burst in air, and the world crapped out in a puff of pearly smoke.
He let them get their breath. He let them get almost back to normal, let them lie soaking in their sweat upon the streaked and stained mattress. He let their hearts go back to normal, kept his passion in check that long.
And then he charged the bed.
The blonde looked up as he came toward her. She looked up and saw, from out of nowhere, a naked man in three dimensions. She stared, and turned to Jan for confirmation, and saw that Jan was somehow laughing at her. And her mouth opened and she started to scream and a fist crashed into her mouth and broke three of her teeth. The scream was stillborn. Blood gushed from her mouth. She spat out her teeth and stared at them and the man crashed down on top of her and sank his teeth into her left breast, biting down as hard as he could. The girl shrieked brittley and fainted.
Fallon raped her like that, quickly and desperately. There was no time to wait for subtleties; she didn't have to be conscious, not now, because he needed her too much to wait. There would be plenty of steam left for when she came to. Right now he only wanted to satisfy all the aching need that filled his being.
He stabbed at her and was startled to discover that she was a virgin. He had not thought that there were any left in the world. Even the fifteen-year-old in the park had been experienced. This one was experienced, of course, but only with girls. No man had ever touched her, not ever in her sweet young life.
Fallon changed that.
Completely.
He loved her as hard and as fast as he could. He didn't even try to make it last a long time because it would have been out of the question. He just wanted to get it out of his system, wanted to blow off some of the steam that the sight of those two had sent gushing through him.
He did this. He took her and he finished with her and he moved from her, and she lay still unconscious on the bed, lay in a limp red pool of blood that seeped into the mattress. He rolled away from her and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Jan. She was still there and her face was charged with something he had never seen before. Her eyes were absolutely wild.
"Oh, God," she said.
He didn't say anything.
"I knew you were watching, Lee. One time I looked up and I saw you there. But I knew you were there before then, I could feel it, your eyes on us. You don't know what that did to me. It made me crazy. I never got so ready in my life, not ever."
"Maybe you like to show off."
"Maybe, whatever, it doesn't matter. Knowing you were watching, and knowing what you were going to do to Karen. That's her name. You knocked out some of her teeth and you made her bleed and you scared her half dead. My God, look at that sweet little boob. You drew blood when you bit her. Did you realize that?"
"I didn't even notice."
She bent over and touched the spot where he had bitten the girl. "It must have been exciting tor you, Lee. Did you ever see Lesbians together before?"
"How would I do that?"
"Sometimes they put on shows. You know, two girls give a demonstration. That thing. But you knew what Lesbians do together, didn't you?"
"Well, yes. But knowing isn't seeing."
"It isn't."
"And it got me crazy. Hell, what the two of yon did. You enjoyed yourself, didn't you?"
"Yes."
He got up and went into the other room for his cigarettes. He brought them back and gave her one and took one for himself and lit them both. She took a long drag on hers and blew out smoke.
She said: "What did you feel? I mean looking at me. I know you wanted her, that wasn't hard to tell. But did you get eager for me, too?"
"No."
"No? Why? Is she prettier than I am?"
"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life."
"Honestly?"
"Hell, yes. But we're partners and friends and I don't get like that for you any more. I don't think I could, not even if you wanted me to."
"I could make you."
"I don't think so. And don't try, Jan, because why should we hurt each other?"
"When we can hurt Karen instead," she said. "That's the idea."
She smoked her cigarette. She was naked and so was he, but neither of them were the least bit embarrassed by the fact. They were completely relaxed together, "I ought to marry you," he said. "And never sleep with me?"
"That's right. There's more important things than sleeping with. You're the world."
"I love you."
"And I love you. Go and figure that one out. You're the only woman on earth I don't want to take and the only one I give a damn about. So we love each other and we couldn't make it with each other for the world. She's going to wake up any minute now. What did you say her name was?"
"Karen."
"Nice name."
"Yes. What are you going to do to her, Lee?"
"What do you think?"
"Well, I can guess. You'll take her again, won't you? And hurt her, torture, things like that. Is that what you'll do?"
He nodded.
"And at the end?"
"Try another guess."
"I suppose you'll kill her," Jan said. "Lee, I want to stay. I can stay and watch, can't I?"
"Sure."
"I want to see it," she said, her voice husky. "I want to watch you, and I want to touch her, and when you kill her I want to watch it, I want to see her die."
She got her wish.
The hlonde girl woke up to horror. She woke up in pain, pain in her mouth, pain in her breast. She woke up to agony, and it didn't take long before they piled more agony on top of it. Fallon did most of it.
He used a cigarette and he used his teeth and he used his hands. He used them on all the soft parts of her and he made her bleed and he made her cry and he made her hurt all over until every bit of her was in pain. He broke bones in her arms and legs and hands.
When he made love to her, which he did brutally, Jan joined the game. She lit a cigarette, and while Fallon was making love to the girl she would jab the cigarette into the girl's sore flesh. Just little pokes that made the girl ache just that much more.
Then Jan made love to the girl as she had done before. And while she did it. Fallon pulled out the girl's toenails with a pliers. It was a nice added refinement, a little extra touch that showed he was using his imagination.
They had fun.
They had a lot of fun, plenty of fun.
Everybody had fun, in fact. Jan had fun and Fallon had fun. Everybody had fun but Karen, and she didn't have any fun at all. They had the fun and she paid for it, paid in pain, paid in agony, paid in torment, paid in terror. She did not scream much. Screaming did not do very much good anyway, because she was one of the few tenants left in the building. Most of them had moved out shortly after the building was scheduled for demolition. And she didn't scream much at all after Fallon had slammed the side of his hand against her windpipe, because after that it hurt like hell whenever she made a sound.
They took turns with her, and they had fun with her. And then Jan was saying: "Lee, let me kill her, please let me kill her. I want to kill her, I want it more than I ever wanted anything in my life."
And Karen knew she was going to die. Her face was horrible, a study in raw fear.
"I don't have a gun or a knife," he said.
"Let me anyway."
The thought thrilled him. "Sure," he said. "Enjoy yourself."
Karen tried to get away, but she couldn't. Fallon sat on her and kept her pinned down. He put his hands on her broken body and felt her. Jan held the girl's breasts and bent down and kissed her on the mouth, then dangled her own ripe breasts in the girl's face.
She straightened up and wrapped her hands around Karen's neck and squeezed. But her grip wasn't strong enough. She squeezed as tight as she could and Karen's qyes bulged from her skull but Jan wasn't strong enough to strangle her. She tried her best but she couldn't. No matter how hard, she couldn't. She tried for a long time and then let go and stood up and got one of the spike heeled shoes that Karen had been wearing. She sat down on the bed and put one of her hands on Karen and held her. With the other hand she gripped the high-heeled shoe by the toe. She raised it high overhead and brought it down hard, full strength, and smashed the spike heel against Karen's forehead. The first blow weakened the skull and the second smashed it and the third and fourth and fifth added insult to injury and by then Karen was dead.
They made love to her again and then left. They went back to the hotel and finished the bottle of Jack Daniels, and Fallon told her all the things he had done and they talked far into the night, and then the bottle was empty and they were tired and they went to sleep in separate rooms.
In the morning she came to his room. He let her in and she sat on his bed while he shaved and showered. He came out fully dressed and she got up from the bed and went to him, her eyes full and moist.
She said: "Last night you talked about marrying me. You didn't mean it, did you?"
"I meant it."
"Really?"
"Yes. It won't last long, though. They know my name now: I must have left prints somewhere. Last night. It couldn't be helped. And they went into high gear when they found her, believe me. The way they found her, they could be standing outside the door this minute. They're looking for Lee Fallon because they checked the prints out and found out who I am. It won't be long before they find Lee Fullmer and it'll all be over."
"For me, too."
"Yes, I guess."
"But we could have until then. Marry me, Lee."
"Are you sure?"
"More sure than I've ever been of anything, partner, friend. Yes, it's what I want."
"And what I want, too."
She stood up. "There's a town in Maryland just across the Pennsylvania State line. You can get married there without a waiting period, you just fill out a license and say I do and then you're married. We could be down there in three hours. I'm ready to pack as soon as you say the word."
"Pack," he said.
She went to her room. He took his suitcase and threw some of his clothing into it and all of the money. He left a lot of things in the hotel because he only needed the money and the gun and a few articles of clothing. The rest of the stuff he could live just as well without. He took the knife, too, and then he was ready. He went up to her room and took her suitcase for her and they went downstairs together and settled their bills and left They got in a cab and rode to Penn Station and waited twenty minutes for a train. It left on time with them on it, sitting in the club car, drinking breakfast. The club car didn't stock Jack Daniels so they were drinking something else.
"Where will we go, Lee?"
"Anywhere," he said. "But not New York. We're hot there. I am, anyway, and they'll know we left together once the hotel manages to figure out who I am. Some other state, it doesn't matter where. We'll need a car."
"We've got a lot of money. Close to five grand between us, with last night's job and the other money we had set aside. Figure fifteen hundred or two grand for a good fast car with no questions asked. Or we could steal one."
"It's not safe. It would be reported."
"Not if we killed the owner. But you're right, it's still not safe. All right, we'll buy a car. That leaves us three grand or more, and we can live on that a long time. We don't even have to pull any more jobs. We can knock off a gas station if things get tough but we won't have to, not for a long time."
She held his hand.
"We better get a long way from New York."
"It won't matter."
"No?"
"No," she said. "We're not going to stop, Lee. We didn't get married to straighten out and live like good people. We'll keep on like this and you know it."
He nodded. She was absolutely right. They would keep on like this, raping and ruining and murdering, running from one crime and into another. And they would not last long. He knew it and she knew it and it was true.
"They'll get us," she said.
"Yes."
"But well have a lot of fun until they do. It was good last night. I didn't know anything could thrill me so much."
"I know."
"I love you. We're going to be married without sleeping together. I never heard of that."
"Neither did I."
"But I really love you. I hope we have a while together, Lee, my love, my friend, my partner. I hope we have our good times together before they get us."
"I hope so."
"And I hope we die together. I wouldn't want one of us to live if the other died."
"We'll die together," he said.
They were in Maryland at three in the afternoon. They had hamburgers together at a diner and went to the courthouse and filled out a license. No waiting period was required, and no blood test. They didn't even have to show identification. They gave their names as Harold Carter and Miriam Plumnutz and the clerk took their six dollars and gave them a license.
There was no civil ceremony in Maryland. You had to find a clergyman. There was a schlock clergyman-with an office across the street from the courthouse, a man who had no pulpit, an old alcoholic who made a good living performing weddings. His wife and his secretary were witnesses. It took seven minutes, and then he pronounced them man and wife and told Fallon he could kiss the bride. Fallon kissed her on the cheek, gently.
Outside he said: "You're my wife now."
"Mrs. Harold Carter."
"Miriam Plumnutz Carter," he said. "You can get an annulment any time you want, you know, because we'll never be able to consummate our marriage. That's ground for an annulment, I think. Not making love at least once."
"We consummated our marriage last night, Lee."
"Oh?"
"Every time we get our kicks together we consummate it all over again. Don't talk about annulments."
They walked to a car agency, a used car lot, and Fallon bound a Buick he liked. It was three years old and in good shape, and the previous owner had put in dual carbs and had done a few other things to soup it up. The body was fair but not perfect, starting to rust through in spots. The dealer wanted twelve hundred for it and Fallon talked him down to an even grand. He asked to see Fallon's license. Fallon showed his marriage license.
"Oh, hell," the man said. "This isn't a motel, it's a car lot. I want to see your driver's license. I don't give a damn if you're married or not."
"The price is a thousand. Right?"
"So what?"
Fallon gave him fifteen hundred dollars. "You just settle for the marriage license," he said. "Be a good boy."
The dealer didn't argue. He took the money and made out a hokey bill of sale, copying a fake license number and fixing things up nicely. Fallon was glad that he did this. That made him an accessory and meant he couldn't tip the law.
They put their bags in the Buick's trunk and got in the car. Fallon headed the heap west and drove at a steady sixty. He didn't want to get stopped by a cop, and he didn't want to spend any more time in the East than he had to.
By the time he was ready to stop for the night they were halfway into Virginia. The car was a good one, with power under the hood and with plenty of road savvy.
The car had a radio and he kept tuning on different news shows but there was nothing about them so there was nothing to sweat about. They stopped at a motel in Chester and took a room. She stayed in the room and he went to town and bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and a New York paper. It would have been safer to send her for the stuff because they had his picture by now, but he went for it himself.
Back in the room they drank bourbon while he read the paper. The paper was full of bad news. They not only knew who he was but they had traced him to the King William and knew he had left town. They also knew he was not alone, knew that Jan was with him. They had her name and description but she had never been arrested and they didn't have a picture of her. There was nothing in the paper about where they had gone; the police didn't seem to know. It did say, though, that they were presumed to have crossed state lines, and that the FBI had been called in on the case.
He read the story aloud to her and she didn't say anything for a long time. Then she said: "Well, husband lover, we'll give them a damned good run for their money."
"You're damned right we will."
"Give me more to drink. I'm not sorry about a thing. Are you?"
"No."
"Not even about the people we killed. I can't help it, I don't feel a thing for them. I know we're bad and evil and I know what we do is horrible but I can't feel sorry."
"Neither can I."
"I love you, Lee."
"And I love you, Jan."
"And we're both crazy."
"I know it. They might commit us if they caught us, instead of giving us the chair. They might say we're insane and just lock us away for the rest of our lives. I suppose maybe we are insane, don't you think?"
"Probably."
"But I don't want them to lock us up. We couldn't be together. I'd rather make them kill us and take as many of them along as we can."
"They won't catch us," he said. "Not alive."
She went into the bathroom and showered while he sat there drinking lightly and reading the rest of the paper. She came out wrapped up in a towel and he went inside and showered the grime of the road from his body. He dried off and returned to the room. She was already in her bed, with the light turned off. He went to his bed but she called to him.
"Sleep with me," she said, "You don't mean that."
"Not love," she said. "Just sleep with me, in this bed, close to me. Would that be hard for you?"
"No. I told you, I don't have any love thing for you. None."
"Would you like sleeping with me? Just sleeping."
"Yes."
He got into bed with her and she wriggled close to him, her body warm and sweet under the covers. He felt the pressure of her breasts and knew they were the best breasts under the sun but he had not been lying, he had no desire for her. He kissed her softly on the mouth and she cuddled up in his arms and closed her eyes and they slept that way all night, like sheep huddled together for warmth.