Chapter 11
After the night of love they'd promised eacl other, they awakened late in the morning far more exhausted than rested. They lay there in bed for a long time, their naked bodies entwined, enjoying the few crumbs left over from the delightful banquet they'd enjoyed the night before.
Finally she asked him a question that seemed entirely superflous. "Do you love me, darling? I mean really and truly love me?"
"Really and truly and all the other things that go with it," he assured her as he hugged her, tightly.
"Enough to-to do anything?"
"Enough to do anything."
She kissed him hard on the lips and even after all they'd been through she quickened the beat of his heart.
"I've made up my mind, Jeff. I can't live with Val any longer; not another day. I didn't tell you last night because I didn't want to spoil any part of it But I hate him, darling. I hate him more than anyone in my whole life. There's never been any love in our marriage. He's never looked upon me as as wife. He just wanted to own me. Show me off. He doesn't even have any respect for me. If I told you some of the things he's made me do...."
Jeff didn't want to hear them.
She had her own reason for wanting him to know.
"I know it'll be hard for you to believe this, Jeff, but ever since you got out of prison he's gotten meaner. Worse than he's ever been. As an example, I don't know whether it was the night he heard about your release, or the day after, that he told me to wait around until after the club closed. That he wanted me to meet some people who would be waiting in his office. Business associates who were in a position to throw a lot of money his way.
"I did. And after Val introduced me to the two men who were there, he said to them, 'Well, here she is, just like I promised.' Then he orderd me to strip in front of them. When I refused he got vile and abusive. Ripped off my gown. Then he went out of the office and left me alone with the two men.
"One of them held my hands, while the other opened a bottle of whiskey and poured it over me. Then they began licking it off me, and making me drink some of it too. When the first bottle was empty they opened another. By the time they got through, we were all drunk and I was like a half-crazed nymphomaniac from the way they'd aroused me.
"I don't know exactly what happened next except that they carried me to the couch-and both of them took me." She clung to Jeff desperately. "He isn't fit to live, darling. He's an animal. I-I want you to kill him!"
Jeff's body suddenly went rigid and he placed his hands on her naked shoulders and held her away from him so he could search her face. He wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. "Kill Val-?"
She met his gaze, unflinchingly. "Yes...."
He forced a twisted smile. "You can't be serious?"
She leaned over the side of the bed and reached her overnight bag from the floor. She placed it on the bed and opened it. It was filled with a lot of fluffy things-nightie, negligee, undies and a pair of silvered, high-heeled slippers.
"Inside," she told him, her eyes still fastened on his face. "Feel inside and see if I'm not serious."
He reached into the bag and felt beneath the flimsy garments until his fingers brushed something cold and hard. He swept the things aside and saw what it was. His brow broke out with cold sweat and his breath caught in his throat. He grabbed it up and studdied it at close range, it was a blue-black .38 calibre automatic pistol!
"You've got to kill him, Jeff darling," she prodded as she kept watching the shocked expression on his face. "He'll never give me a divorce. I'm too valuable to him. I know too much about him. As for you-he'll send you back to prison, or do something worse-especially if he finds out about us. He'll kill both of us."
Jeff kept shaking his head as he dropped the gun back into the overnight bag and covered it over with the negligee and the other things in the bag, as if that discharged the subject. "I couldn't do it, Janice. I couldn't kill htm-or anyone else."
She closed the cover of the bag and kissed his lips as she nestled against him. "Darling, do you realize how happy we could be together just you and I? Do you know how much money we'd have if he were dead? More than a million dollars. Val has that much in savings, securities, investments. And it would be ours-'every penny of it-if he were dead."
"But you don't understand, Janice," he tried to impress on her. "I couldn't do it. I may have thought I could a few times in prison. But when I stood face-to-face with him last night, I knew I never could."
"Not even after the terrible things he did to you. Sending you to prison for eight years. All the horrible things he's done to me? You don't love me that much?"
"I love you more than anything in the world," he told her as he held her close to him. "But I couldn't do that. I couldn't live with myself and neither could you. For the rest of our lives we'd keep remembering the terrible thing we did."
He felt her sigh and slowly pull back away from him.
"Then I guess there isn't very much more to say, is there?" she asked coldly.
"Janice! Please!" he said desperately. "Try to understand."
She moved further away from him and started to get off the bed. "What's there to understand? I told you-we can't go on seeing each other like this. It's too frustrating and too dangerous. If Val found out-!"
He grabbed her and tried to keep her in bed. She looked down at his hands on her arms, without expression. "You're hurting me, Jeffrey. Please let me go."
"You've got to listen to me Janice. There must be another way."
"Only there is no other way!" she said with terrible finality.
He let go of her and she got off the bed. She gathered up her clothes and went into the bathroom. He heard the splash of the shower and then after a while when she came out, she was dressed.
He started to get out of bed and reach his clothes.
"It would be better if you stayed here until after I've gone," she said to him in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's a bus stop about ten minutes away. It'll take you back to Hoboken."
"When will I see you again?" he asked.
"That's up to you, she said. "If you change your mind."
She didn't kiss him goodbye. She just reached her overnight bag from the bed, took something from her purse and put it on the table near the door. A moment later she was gone.
It wasn't until Jeff was dressed and leaving the cabin that he saw what Janice had left on the table near the door. A twenty dollar bill. He wondered if this was her way of being subtile after what he refused to do-and was paying him for the "good time" he'd shown her last night. He preferred to think that she realized a man fresh out of prison and on a job only one night would need bus fare back to Hoboken as well as some ready cash.
As he walked toward the bus stop, he gave a thought to Freda. It was the most logical place for him to go and wait until the club opened. But after his strenuous all night session with Janice he didn't feel up to what Freda would have to offer. Furthermore, Janice hadn't left him in a very congenial mood. He had a lot of serious thinking to do between now and the time BRUNO'S opened. And for that kind of thinking he had to be by himself.
Jeff had just finished his stint between the first and second show and was getting up from the piano bench, when Freda stepped alongside and said "You're getting to be quite a man with the ladies One wants to see you at table fourteen."
His heart began to thump excitedly, wondering if it could be Janice, as he walked with Freda between the tables.
"Have a good time last night?" Freda asked in a whisper.
"It isn't what you think." he tried to tell her.
"Oh!" You do a mind reading act, too?" she said with mild sarcasm.
He couldn't answer because they were at table fourteen and Freda had turned and walked away The "lady" seated before him wasn't Janice. She was a little heavier set with shoulder length auburn colored hair.
"Hello, Jeff!" she said warmly.
It took him several moments before he recognized her. "Donna!"
Donna Dee had been a theatrical booking agent on the west coast when he was holding court at the NIGHT HAWK. While she hadn't been his agent she'd been working on a television deal for him; trying to sell him to one of the networks just before he went to prison.
She held out her hands to him and he toot hold of them and held them tight, as he sat across from her at the table. He remembered her as a blonde hair bleached almost to the color of straw She'd always been pretty but eight years and he auburn looks had made her much more attractive.
She still retained her high, full bust, a hint of which Jeff could see, thanks to the decolette of her black gown. There were whispered reasons why he had never got around to sampling them.
"I thought you were entrenched out on the coast. What are you doing here," Jeff asked.
"Came for a visit about five years ago and decided to stay and open an office here. But I'm more interested in YOU. Why a place like this?"
"When your stomach's growling you don't argue with the surroundings."
"But you belong in a spot across the river" He shrugged. "Maybe one day I'll make it over there?"
Donna toyed absently with her half-empty martini glass "You probably heard about your ex-partner. Big wheel these days. Owns one of the hottest spots in the city. He ought to be good for a job." She read his expression. "No?"
He shook his head.
"I can't say that I exactly blame you. He certainly left the ship in a big hurry, once it washed up onto the rocks. Happened so fast, I never quite got the true picture. I just know that I never believed you were guilty of any of those things they said you did."
"Thanks."
She sipped some of her drink. "What surprised me most was how quickly the love-of-your-life rushed to the altar with him."
Jeff's shoulders tightened a little under his white dinner jacket. In spite of what Janice had asked him to do and heartbreak she'd caused him by the way she'd left him, he still felt the same way about her. He still loved her and he knew that somehow he'd see her again and straighten everything out between them.
"He sold her a bill of goods," he said quickly in Janice's defense.
Donna seemed to register mild surprise. "Oh?"
"She's had no bed of roses."
"But she's slept in it for eight years."
"Not because she wanted to." Donna studied his face, quizzically"
"Are we talking about the same girl?"
Jeff's frown deepened with resentment. "What do you mean?"
She kept looking at him a moment longer. Then she mustered a sort of apologetic grin. "Not a thing I was just trying to make a funny. I didn't know the torch you're carrying came with a built in eternal flame. Just be careful, huh?"
Before he could ask what she meant, the lights in the club began to die. A baby spot hit Ninette wearing her bright red gown, as she stood in the center of the dance floor and ushered in the second show of the evening.
Donna wasn't the least bit interested in Ninette She'd come for one purpose, to see Jeff. She started to gather up her things to leave.
"Let me buy you one for the road," Jeff offered She smiled and shook her auburn-topped head "I'll take a rain-check. Another drink'd make me the menace of the Lincoln Tunnel." She stood up and fished a card from her handbag. "You change your mind about a new job, Sweetie, you come see me at my office."
He took the card as he stood to face her.
Donna wasn't very tall. She had to stand on the tip-toes of her spike-heeled pumps to reach his lips. When she drew back and settled her gaze on his face, her breathing seemed just a trifle above normal.
"Y'know something," she confided in a whisper. "You're the first MAN that ever gave me wet pants"
"Stop kidding me."
"Like to come out to my car in the parking lot and have me prove it?"
He looked at the sensuous thrust of her lower lip and the intriguing depth of her cleavage. "Suppose I take a rain check?"
She sighed.
"I sure hope it rains like hell in a damn big hurry," was her parting shot as she brushed past him. "And don't lose that card."
The next moment she was gone.
The final show had ended and Jeff was sitting at the baby grand, playing his last set of the evening, when Ninette stepped alongside him.
"Bruno's gone home," she whispered confidentially. "I'll be closing up again."
"Think it's safe two nights in a row?"
She looked at him tauntingly. "You mean after all your bragging-you're afraid you can't make it TWO nights in a row?"
"Okay," he promised, his manhood challenged. I'll be there-and I'll make it TWO TIMES in ONE night."
"I'll hold you to that," she told him and he saw her nipples rise under the material of her red gown as she turned and walked away.
At two-forty-five A.M., with the usual sprinkling of hangers-on still in the club, Jeff made his way to Bruno's private office. He may as well see Ninette, he thought. It might help him get his mind off Janice.
When he reached the office, he rapped softly against the door. It opened almost at once and Ninette stood behind it as he entered. The moment he was inside, she locked the door and turned to face him. She was wearing a diaphanous white negligee and white heels. Maybe white made her feel pure? But certainly there was nothing PURE about her intentions.
Actually she might just as well have worn no covering at all. It made her hair look blacker in both places and her lips seem more red. But it hid absolutely nothing. Every hill and crevice, the snug fit of her shapely thighs, her large nipples and the wide circles of pink surrounding them-all were clearly visible through the transparent material.
She saw him ogling her body and smiled. "I thought it'd save time."
She went to him and put her arms around his waist. He seemed to sink into the softness of her body as he kissed her.
"See how fast you can get your things off," she said to him as she took her arms from around him and walked to the big leather couch. She grabbed up a couple of pillows and threw them on the floor as he hurriedly removed his clothing.
She sat on the floor and watched him finish undressing, commenting favorably with four-letter words on the bulge that showed when he got down to his shorts. Her remarks were even more complimentary when he removed his shorts and stepped forward to stand over her with his promise of pleasure unfurled.
She threw off the negligee and with one of the pillows tucked under her buttocks to raise herself, she stretched out on her back to her full length; arms extended over her dark head; legs spread wide apart.
"Remember," she reminded him, gluttonously, as he dropped to his knees in the deep-knap carpet between her parted thighs. "You promised TWICE."
He hadn't forgotten. He started at her knees and ran his hands up over the satiny flesh of her legs ... hips ... sides ... and then grabbed at hsr big bulbous breasts. He suckled first one and then the other of her large, hard, red nipples with as much relish as if they offered his nourishment.
Downward over her vibrating stomach, slid his hands; through the wirey black tangle into the dark cavern. First carefully reconnoitering the long, moist-walled passageway, Jeff then brought his big gun into action. But Ninette had some heavy artillery of her own and the moment he got within range, she opened fire on him.
Relentlessly, they hammered away at each other, giving no quarter, there on the carpeted floor of the dimly-lighted night club office-until finally he blasted the retaining wall at the extreme end of the cave. She surrendered unconditionally to him-but not before she had taken a toll of his big gun-causing him to withdraw from the darkness of the cavern as spent and wilted as the cannons of Napoleon's once-undaunted armies in their retreat from Waterloo.