Chapter 13
She expected his prick was going to hurt her as it rudely penetrated the delicate vaginal tissues, and went tense with involuntary anticipation of pain as she felt the well-remembered phallic head part her labia and push past the cervical gate. But, surprisingly, she grew moist at the very last second and he slid up and into her as easily as a sword through butter.
My God! Phyllis thought. I'm enjoying this!
She peaked within seconds as Pres's prods and up-thrusts penetrated her core, abetted as they were by the force of gravity, aided further by his hands pushing down on her thighs, despite vividness of sexual recall, she had forgotten how gifted a lover her husband was. Or, perhaps, he had gained in expertise during the years of his supposed death.
But she knew this was impossible. Pres, by his own admission, had been an erotic veteran by his middle teens and had, during the years of their marriage, proved his expert swordsmanship in a seemingly endless variety of ways. Which meant that she had improved, rather than he.
Again she wondered what was happening to her. She had never quite been able to believe the stories so often repeated of girls and women who found themselves actually enjoying the brutal process of being raped. But as she peaked again, Phyllis found herself clutching and kissing this all too solid phantom that had come so unexpectedly back into her life. She thrilled and thrilled again and thought, Come is the word, come is the word.
She was squirming and wriggling like a gaffed eel by the time she felt the spurt of Pres's sperm inside her womb and clutched him in a final paroxysm of pleasure. His dark eyes regarded her shrewdly as he disengaged her and he said, "Thanks, darling. You were always an eager piece of ass. Now you've added expertise."
Had he always been so cold-blooded about making love to her, Phyllis wondered, and then the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her. She was trapped in her own upstairs bathroom with a proven murderer, a major narcotics smuggler, above all, a man who had tried to decapitate her only two mornings before, as he had decapitated J. J. O'Brien with an explosive bullet.
She said, "All right, Pres, how are you going to get out of this? Just about every law enforcement agency in the country is after you."
He shrugged, seemingly undisturbed as he stood up to hold his prick under the washbasin faucet. He was holding the handgun again in his free right hand. He said, "The same way I got in here. This house was part of the Underground Railroad in pre-Civil War days, you know."
"I know," she said.
"What you don't know is that there's an underground passage leading from the basement to an opening right next to what is now the central parking lot."
"They'll find it. You know they will."
"They hadn't found it when I came in here the other night. What's more, since they don't know I'm here, they have no reason to look. Why should they?"
"Because I'm here now," said Phyllis. "They're bound to come looking for me. And the house is guarded now."
He said, wiping his cock on a face towel and letting it fall to the fuzzy mat on the floor, "If worst comes to worst, I can always use you as a hostage. Of course, you'll have to fly the country with me and there's no guarantee they'll let you return. But if you don't make an utter ass of yourself...."
He let it hang. Phyllis could read the complete lack of any human concern in his sardonic dark regard. Suddenly anger at this man who had so completely betrayed her rose to the surface and she said, "You tried to kill me the other morning. Why don't you simply kill me now and have done with it?"
He shook his head, gave her a mock loving squeeze of a breast, said, "Once that dammed Lem Weldon drew up a new will for you, so that I would no longer inherit, you became worth more to me alive. At least Lem and that fucking cowboy Buckley wouldn't have the shares."
"Why did you send Gina de Brett to the Walden Pines to murder me then?" she asked.
"Because I didn't. Gina did that on her own. She was insanely jealous of you. I'm afraid that was my doing. I used to compare her fucking with yours to give her an incentive to make it good. I'm not too sorry you killed her, darling. She was a dumb, jealous broad."
"Why did you bother with her then?"
"She was Old Sal's niece and he planted her on me. I thought it was better to go along. Besides, she was a good piece of ass in her dumb way and gave me all the head I wanted."
Phyllis gasped and jumped as the telephone rang, then looked inquiringly at Pres. He waved the gun barrel toward the instrument, said, "Answer it, girl. And be very careful for your own sake, above all."
It was Beth. She sounded worried. She said, "I just got a call from Lem. He says there's a car in the town parking lot that's been traced to Gina de Brett. The same car was seen parked outside J. J. O'Brien's home before he was killed. Are you all right, Phyl?"
"I'm fine, couldn't be better," Phyllis told her. She looked covertly at Pres, added, "Why wouldn't I be? This place is guarded like the crown jewels of England."
"I feel better. I was worried. If Pres has run to earth here, his own place might be where he'd go. Besides, unless memory fails me, there's a-"
"That's right, Beth," said Phyl. "I agree with everything you say. Now go to sleep and forget it."
She was tempted to add, "Would you like to talk to Pres? He's right here in the bathroom with me." But sight of the pistol barrel deterred her.
She put down the phone, turned to him, said, "Was I okay?"
"As far as I know," he replied, looking untroubled. "If you weren't, you know who's going to suffer for it."
She sat on the edge of the tub, hugging the twin fullness of her breasts, said, "You killed Gerry. Why?"
He looked at her as if she were incredibly stupid. "I had to kill him. He was the only citizen of this town who knew I was alive. He had the bad luck to see me on the street in Boston. I suppose you know he and I got our kicks together for a while. I wanted to make that fool Freddy Gardiner jealous. He knew Gerry was getting it somewhere, but not who he was getting them with. That, sweetie pie, was why he turned to you. I didn't give a damn then. You were 'way behind me. I had Gina in Boston and things a lot better than either of you in Asia when I was there."
"Why did you kill him then?"
"Because he was going to spill the whole thing to you. He figured it all out when he heard about Old Sal's will. Gerry wasn't dumb, whatever else he may have been. It was his bad luck you were late getting here. I'd been waiting to see you. I knew I was still sole legatee and I wanted to work something out."
"You were going to kill me to get that damned stock," she told him, trying not to feel sick at the casual callousness of this man she had once loved so deeply.
"Only if I had to," he replied. "But you see, once he came here, I had to kill Freddy. There was no other way."
"You are a bastard, aren't you! Multiple murderer, narcotics smuggler, even homosexual on occasion."
"Flattery will get you nowhere. We might as well ball as go on with this."
He grabbed her, adroitly slipped her into the tub, got in with her, pushed her onto her side, lifted her left thigh and slid his phallus into her hole ... just like that. Once again, she was unexpectedly ready for his entrance, once again, to her horror, she began to come almost from the instant their union was complete. Pres was treating her like a whore and her body, at any rate, was loving it.
She felt tears roll down her cheeks as she peaked again and again until, at last, his semen flowed deep inside her and the rapid retreat began.
He told her then how he and Old Sal had set up the operation as a private connection, apart from the Mafia. Pres said, "My narcotics connection goes back to college. Everybody thought the family was still rich, but right then we were poor as church mice. I financed myself peddling pot and amphetamines and coke. Since I never touched the stuff myself and picked my customers carefully, nobody ever caught on.
"Later on, during the Korean thing, I made connections in Asia. When I got back here, I went to Sal-I'd met him once or twice while I was still in school. I was ready and so was he. Everybody was getting rich until Lem Weldon got poking around in it for his outfit and picked up a couple of leads that could have hurt. That was when I came up with the scheme of officially dying. It worked out just great. I landed behind the Viet-cong lines, smooth as silk, and got a warm welcome."
"What became of your crew?"
The shrug again, then, "Unfortunately, there was no way to fake their deaths. Too bad in a way. They weren't bad guys-just unreliable."
"What about J. J. O'Brien?" she asked.
"He was the only one who knew. He was my link when Sal and I couldn't meet. After Sal's death, he was under pressure-heavy pressure-from Lem Weldon and that bastard Tim Buckley. He was afraid of going to jail. The poor fool thought everybody would bugger him there. An old coot like him with sagging belly and buttocks!"
"So he had to go?"
"So he had to go..." Once again the shrug she was growing to hate. "So I came here till things cool off." He fondled his phallus as if readying it for another sex bout. He said, "Well, you've asked a lot of questions and I've given you a lot of answers."
"I suppose you intend to kill me any minute or you wouldn't have talked so much," she told him.
"You're safe enough unless I find I don't need you for a hostage," he said.
"Just one more thing, Pres-how do you plan to get out of here?"
"If I can get out alone, I'll drive to a certain private airport where a jet will be waiting. I'll be safely back in Shanghai in a matter of hours."
"While I...? "
He shrugged.
"And if you don't go alone."
"You'll come with me, sweetie."
"For how long?"
"For just as long as my partners decide you're more valuable to them alive than dead. It could be a lifetime reprieve. There's no way of knowing."
He glanced at the wristwatch that was now his sole garment, said, prodding her with the muzzle of the pistol, "Come on-put some clothes on that fair white body."
He had her select a charcoal pants suit and black loafers. Then he got into his own clothing, including the red-white-and-blue shorts. Looking down at them, he said, "I thought these were rather a nice touch-patriotic."
All Phyllis could do was obey, hoping that Beth had read correctly her saying, "That's right, Beth. I agree with everything you say."
Thus far, the only edge she had on her ex was the fact that his pursuers had found his car-or rather Gina de Brett's-in the town parking lot ... and just how she was going to turn this to her advantage, or even to her survival under the circumstances, she had no idea.
In the meantime, she had to go along, quite aware that he would kill her out of hand if he felt the situation required it. Hadn't he already tried twice to put her out of the way?
"The thing that really gets me," he remarked before they headed for the stairs, "is that that monumental jerk Emilio Colucci will wind up with the Interocean shares. Sal wanted me to have that, which was why he willed them to you."
The shrug again, then, "Oh, well, you can't win them all-but I hate to see that much loot get into the hands of a dumb jerk who won't use it as it should. It was the dumb bastard's stupidity that made Sal turn to me."
He waved her toward the staircase and they went on clown, then down another flight to the basement. It was dark in there but Pres refused to turn on a light lest it cause the guards outside to grow suspicious and investigate before he was clear of the property.
Not until they were in the dank old passage itself did Pres produce a needle-beam flashlight from a pocket to illumine their way. The old tunnel, which stunk like an ancient tomb, was barely four feet high, forcing them both to stoop. It was longer than Phyllis had expected, seemingly without end, and it angled sharply to the right after they had progressed along it some fifty feet.
Thirty feet further, it ended abruptly. Pres, who had been following her, pushed past her and turned, whispering, "Don't do anything dumb, Phyl. I'd made Swiss cheese of you before you could reach the bend."
She crouched helpless as he slowly pushed upward and a ragged rectangle of night sky was exposed. There was a slight creak of wood being shifted and then he was back and reaching for her.
"Just in case," he said, "you go first. But I'll be right on your tail."
Phyllis felt a moment of paralyzing panic as she got her fingers on the edge of the opening. If anyone was out there, she felt certain, they would shoot without hesitation anything that moved. Then Pres jammed the muzzle of the automatic hard up into her butt crack and, with a despairing grunt, she scrambled upward and out, flattening against the ground and finding herself scratched by a tangle of gone-to-seed shrubbery in which she lay.
She heard Pres grunt slightly behind her as he emerged and then, for a moment, he was half upright, wheeling in a crouch with his gun at the ready in case an unwelcome committee was lying in wait for them.
At that moment, five shots rang out, even paced, and for the second time within a week a bleeding dead man's body collapsed on top of her. For the second time, Phyllis fell apart and uttered a scream of horror.
Then the body of her late husband was pulled clear of her own and Tim was holding her close in the curve of his left arm as a blaze of car lights came on to illumine the scene.
"I owed you that," he said, moving to block her view of the mangled mess that was Press Barrett's body.
She said, somewhat stupidly, "But there were no lights. How did you see?"
"Infra-red sighting tube," he said, lifting the ugly automatic rifle in his right hand. "Don't crack up, Phyl-it's all over. That bas-your former husband was the one we had to get. With Sal and him dead, and most of the others slated for pickup, the American end of this thing is kaput."
"Did you have to kill him?" she said.
He looked up at her in surprise-she was always forgetting that she was inches taller than he-and said, "Why-would you want him alive?"
It seemed almost as callous as Pres had been, but all she could do was shake her head weakly. Then Tim took her back to Beth's for the slim balance of the night.
There was a meeting that afternoon in Lem Weldon's fine old restored pre-Revolutionary farmhouse home. There were only four persons present-Lem, Tim, Phyllis and Emilio Colucci. The official transfer of the Interocean shares was made legal and in return for the key to the safe-deposit box where they were held, Lem accepted an envelope containing six million dollars in Phyllis's behalf.
"Okay." Tim had been growing more and more restless and the deal proceeded at a dignified pace. "I'm only here as a witness and I'm due in Washington this evening."
"Go ahead," Lem told him. "Emilio and I have a few technicalities to settle."
Suddenly, Phyllis realized that the man who had protected her, the man who had reawakened her as a woman, was about to walk out of her life. She knew better than to try to hold him, but she could not let him go like this.
Catching up with him in the front hall, she said, "Haven't you forgotten something, Tim?"
He looked puzzled, then grinned as he looked into her eyes and, once again, read her correctly.
Then he led her into the small bathroom off the front hall and fucked her with their clothes on, standing crowded against a wall. It was awkward, it was outrageous, it was quick, it was delicious. When she got back to the living room, she caught Lem Weldon's bright blue eyes following her, saw their slight crinkling at the corners which revealed he knew exactly what she and Tim had been doing.
So what, she thought. I'm not ashamed-I'm proud!
When at last the transfer was complete to the two attorneys' satisfaction, Lem broke out a bottle of truly ancient private-stock brandy that had been in a branch of his family for more than a hundred years. As the mellowing impact of the magically smooth old liquor had its inevitable relaxing effect, Phyllis felt Emilio's dark eyes increasingly taking her in.
Glancing at him, she noted again his good looks and fluid ease of body and thought, I wonder if it's me or the millions. It gave her pause but only briefly as she decided it would be fun to find out. So he was a Mafia don-so what? With her money, she no longer had to give a damn what anyone else thought.
If Pres could make her come as he had only last night, in circumstances of great hate and deep fear, then any man could make her come if she wanted to. Tim Buckley had taught her that and she was going to enjoy life with any man who pleased her. But she knew, deep down inside her, that she would drop anybody and anything whenever he whistled for her. But in the meantime....
When Emilio made a date to take her to dinner that Friday night, she said, "Why not? It might be fun."