Chapter 13
When the four hoods hit the cabin, Rush was dressed and so was Lei, because they'd been out walking along the ridge where the eucalyptus trees grew leaning away from the sea winds.
Two came in the front door, two in the back. They were quick and they were pretty damned good, but they hadn't come to kill, and that made the big difference.
They'd only come to take him, to wrap him up for somebody, and they came swinging blackjacks. Rush kicked over his chair and hit the floor rolling. A sap whipped through the air where his head had been and slapped the table with a loud whap!
Rush caught a chair leg and spun the chair into one guy, came up quick and low into another guy, butting him in the belly. He took a shot across the kidney from the second man, then butted him under the chin as he straightened up. Rush kneed the hood and wheeled him into another charging man.
Women were screaming, and he caught a flash of naked legs running, from the corner of his eye. With a swift motion, he pegged the martini pitcher at a guy's head, bobbed under a full armed swing with a blackjack, and hooked the man in the guts.
They were in a tangle, mixed up with the table and chairs, one down and another staggering. Rush moved in to punch a good combination at a dark head, and caught movement at his shoulder.
Something flailed him across the jaw, and he staggered off to the left, keeping his hands up and trying to clear his head. Glass and brown liquid flew around him, and a man yelped hoarsely.
Rush saw a face and nailed it with an overhand right; he caught another coming in, caught him good with a winging hook. Then somebody was pulling at him, yelling in his ear.
"Rush! Come on, come on! Hurry!"
His eyes came back into focus and he ran with her, out the front door and across the porch. She was in the big Continental and had the motor going when he reached the door. She slid across the seat and he hesitated."
"Hurry!" she said. "They'll kill you."
The other car was parked at an angle on the plateau, its rear wheels pointing down hill. Rush darted to it, reached through the open window and released the handbrake, yanked the shift out of Park.
It was rolling when he got back to the Continental and jumped in. He gunned the big car out of the way just in time. The black Mercury came rolling past, missing by inches, and gathered speed as it moved down the hill.
Rush had the Continental turned and following when the hoods came boiling out over the porch, yelling. One of them fired a pistol, but high. Rush gave the car some gas and it was right on the rolling Merc's grill as the other car went into the curve it couldn't make. He tapped the brakes and watched the Merc go over the side. It made a hell of a crash.
"That'll slow them some," he said, and worked the car down the twisting road until it reached the two-lane blacktop below. He followed that road to the highway, and wheeled out onto it, digging out.
"The stuff," he said. "Have to get to it, move it some place else-"
"The girls only know the general location," Lei said. "And maybe they won't tell. They were going out the back door, last I saw. If they kept running, they're up on the ridge somewhere, hiding."
"You stayed," he said. "Yes."
"You nailed a guy with a bottle, that's what all that glass was. You stayed and helped out."
Lei didn't say anything else, and Rush tromped the gas pedal. The big car leaped ahead. The Allison place, he thought. He felt like hell leaving the girls behind, but the hoods weren't really after them Maybe they wouldn't even chase them in the woods. Maybe they'd trot down the hill to a phone and call their boss to report the foul up-and describe the car Rush was in.
"You're right about the stuff," he said. "They'll have a tough time finding it, even if they know where to look. And they'll probably think I stopped for it, anyhow."
"Where are we going?" Lei asked.
"Lorna's," he said. "There's nowhere else."
The chauffer wasn't in sight when Rush parked the car in front of the garage. He went with Lei to the back door, passed through the kitchen and didn't see the cook. The house was quiet, no maids stirring, no music going.
"Doesn't seem to be anyone home," Lei said. "I'm cold. I'll go up and borrow some clothes from Cleo's room, something warmer."
Rush said, "I'll make some drinks in the playroom, and try to figure what we do next."
They separated, and Rush had a straight shot of bourbon at the bar. He found cigaretts and lighted one. Then he sat on a bar stool and thought about events, about the pistol that had gleamed up at him from next to the ice chest behind the bar.
The barkeep had started things into motion. From him to Geegee Fallo; from that slob to the attack at the cabin. How'd Geegee know where he was? The barkeep again, passing word about Rush.
I and Lorna Allison-or maybe that other slob, Kemp Ramsey. He knew about the cabin and the girls. He had a burn on for Rush, and his wife Cleo. For Jan Allison, too-since she wouldn't lay him.
But behind it all was the stuff, the heroin, the two hundred big ones it meant. Fallo may have sent word to his wholesaler, to some of the mob people, Rush wasn't so sure about that, though. The big boys would just move in and grab, leaving Fallo out in the cold.
And how the hell was Rush Scanlon going to keep the big boys from grabbing from him?
He heard footsteps, and turned to ask the question of Lei, only it wasn't Lei. It was Lorna Allison.
"I missed you," she said. "Pour me a Scotch on the rocks, and I'll tell you how much I missed you."
"Better yet," he said, choosing a bottle, "show me how much."
"That, too," she said, holding out her hand for the drink. "But first, tell me who hit you. There's a mark on your cheek. That bastard Kemp?"
Rush told her who, and filled her in quickly on the story of what happened at the cabin, of leaving the girls there.
Lorna looked serious. "They'll probably be all right. It had to be Kemp, after that crap he had my bartender pull. Wait, I'll call the caretaker in the canyon, and I'll send my driver up there. Maybe I'll send a couple of deputies, too."
She was gone, taking her glass with her, and Rush heard her dialing on the hall extension. He poured himself another drink, glanced down at the shiny little pistol, and thought about Lorna. He hadn't told her about the heroin, and wouldn't. There was no need for her to know. She thought her son-in-law was giving him the trouble, and he'd leave it at that. The social register Mrs. Allison wouldn't know about narcotics and hoods.
She was back in a few moments. "I called the girls. They're all right, just anxious to come home. I sent the caretaker up to check on them, and sent a car for them Lei is with you, then?"
He nodded. "Changing clothes."
"That bastard Kemp. That bastard Frankie Lamana. Him, I fired, Kemp, I'll break. He has money of his own, you know. I was in San Francisco arranging some things, buying some paper. It'll take a little time, but I'll break Kemp Ramsey."
Rush poured her another drink. "Okay, the hell with him, and here's to us. I missed you, too, Lorna."
"The girls kept you busy, didn't they? And Lei?"
Truthfully, he said, "It's not the same without you."
"You're sweet, and a lot of male. Are you certain you're in condition?"
"Certain," he said. "I'll show you."
"You do that, you just come around that bar and do that."
She had on a bright yellow dress, a miniskirted affair that hugged her small hips and snugged tightly around her shapely breasts. Her legs were bare, her tiny feet tucked into yellow shoes that matched her dress, and that had very high, thin heels.
She didn't get off the stool, but sat there looking up at him with her drink in one hand, with her heels hooked over the step of the bar stool. Golden woman. He always thought of her as that-rich and polished and blonde all over. A tiny woman, smaller even than her daughter, Jan. But every modeled inch of her was woman, voluptuous and amorous and beautiful.
He walked up to her and she opened her knees; the skirt slid up around her hips, and he saw she'd gotten out of her panties earlier. The golden sheen of her pubic hairs gleamed at him.
"I'll smudge your dress," he said.
"Tear it off."
He hooked fingers in the collar, where it dipped between her high breasts, those small, firm breasts. He jerked, and the thin material fell away from her gleaming body. Her tits jumped out at him, pink nippled, burnished. She looked ripe, and lush, and great.
He kicked out of pants and shorts, running his eyes over that fine, rich body as she sat there on the stool, her knees spread and her heels hooked over the step. A hell of a woman, bitchy and bawdy and so beautiful she hurt a man's eyes.
With a big hard-on, he walked right in between her legs and laid his cock up against her belly; the head of it reached almost to her tits. Lorna pressed it tightly against her belly with her hand. The other hand went to his neck and pulled his face forward for a kiss.
Her tongue was quick and hot, and her mouth was spiced with Scotch, as well as eagerness. Lorna's lips were mobile, and she was panting as her teeth touched his.
She withdrew to stare into his eyes, to push him slightly back, using his organ as a wagon tongue. Then she bent him down to insert the head of his rod into the rich, golden, curl hair of her mound.
He pushed it into her as she rolled up on her ass cheeks and lifted her sleek legs so he could drive it home deep and solid. He was all the way into that clinging pussy then.
His balls were tight between her thighs, resting on the top of the bar stool. His prick was up into her body, home in the hot glove of her vagina. Lorna put her legs up higher and crossed them behind his back. He caught her by her small, fragile hips, and pulled her cunt forward upon his stiff rod.
"You powerful bastard," Lorna said. "You strong, powerful lover man. Lay it to me like this, stick me deep and hard, lover man. Drive it home and screw me until I pass out."
He closed her mouth with his, then opened her teeth again to accept his tongue. He timed the motions of his tongue to the stroking of his rod as he slid it back and forth in that wondrous pussy, that tight and grasping pussy.
Standing with his feet braced against the carpet, with his hands on her waist, Rush laid it to her, plunged his rigid staff in and out of her suctioning slot, rodding her hard and deep. But still she wanted it harder and deeper; she hooked those spike heel shoes into his buttocks and urged him to rip her open, to bury himself entirely into her body.
He thrust into her, twisted it around so that she felt the rod, and the head, against the walls of her vagina, felt them rub slippery over her throbbing clitoris, felt that big, spongy head driving against the entrance to her womb.
"Bastard, bastard-bastard." Lorna moaned, and swung her tight, slim ass in violent circles, grinding herself into his pelvis and fucking as if she'd gone out of her head.
Lorna came in a wild spasming of thighs and a hunching of her belly. She raised herself completely from the stool and shuddered upon the hard penis that impaled her, writhing and flexing her pussy upon it. Her nails clawed Rush's back, her heels dug into his tail.
He kept right on stroking her, not giving her a moment's break, not allowing her one second to catch her breath and get her sexual balance. She was burning inside, hotter and softer, but he wasn't close to an orgasm yet, and screwed away at her when she tried to go limp, when she attempted to sag back and rest.
He stuck her and pulled back, so that her cunt almost released the head, only to drive it back up inside her with a long, twisting lunge that made her flinch, that hurt exactly as she enjoyed being hurt.
"Hold on, baby!" he hissed it against her teeth, hissed it into her gasping breath. "Hold tight, Lorna-I'm going to keep fucking you until you go out of your skull. It's good, isn't it? It's big and hard and reaching deep-don't you feel it touch bottom, baby? There-and there-and there!"
Rush pounded her pussy good, slammed his pile driver up into the hot box that was coming back to life, the sheath that was responding to his screwing once more. He felt it constrict on him, grab him and let him go, then nip him again.
"Uh-uh-uh!" Lorna grunted. "Oh-kill me-rip me up-jam me until I can't breathe. Oh, what a prick! Oh-"
She was heaving and bucking against him again, screwing him back as she met him stroke for stroke, and her heels were beating a tattoo against the metal legs of the bar stool as their rhythm sped up.
He felt her climbing swiftly to another climax, and this time hurried to be with her, to blend with her in that moment of supreme ecstasy. They hunched together in a mounting fury that brought them squirming and gasping to a mutual orgasm.
Rush stood with his feet apart, with his rod buried to the root in Lorna's vagina, letting it throb steadily with the spurting of his discharge. In turn, he felt the spasms of her cunt and the added lubrication there.
She lay her head against his shoulder, and the heaving of her chest slowed. The inside of her thighs relaxed, and her sheath loosened around his penis. He held it in her for awhile, letting it melt, soften, shrink in the heat and oiliness he liked best. A hell of a woman, Lorna Allison, and a hell of a lay. No wonder her daughters were so hot to go. They'd inherited their sex drives naturally, from Lorna.
When he at last backed from her, she sighed and lifted her head from his shoulder. After he moved from between her knees, she stood up and walked in her high heels behind the bar, her small, trim tail bobbing in naked seductiveness.
She fixed the drinks this time, and said to him: "You're in some kind of trouble, Rush? I mean, if Kemp didn't send those men after you, then who-"
"No trouble I can't handle," he said, wondering why she'd taken that turn, after being so certain about Kemp Ramsey before.
"Okay, but remember, I'm handy. I don't want anyone bothering you, taking your mind from your-avocation."
He laughed with her, and couldn't help being intrigued by the way her tits bobbled as she leaned over the bar. He'd never thought to ask about a Mr. Allison, but now he thought the guy must have gone out the hard way-being screwed to death. Or was that the easiest way?
Lei Ng entered the room. The clothes she'd changed into were a sheer scarlet robe and red shoes with heels as high as those Lorna habitually wore. Her hair was piled atop her head, adding I stature and giving her an aspect of sophistication.
She smiled slightly at Rush, and came to stand beside him at the bar. Lorna put a drink into her hand, and when Lei swiftly downed it, refilled her glass. "Well, Lei," she said then, "we've been waiting for this moment, haven't we? You and I-as always-and now our lover. The combination will be a most interesting one, don't you think?"
Rush blinked. Lei and Lorna and himself. Why the hell not? Lei had been making it with Lorna for some time, she'd admitted that, and the fact didn't shake him up any.