Chapter 4
With a cold viciousness which would have startled even those who knew him well, Victor Rizzi systematically ripped and tore every dress, suit, robe and gown filling the closets and chests in the Cleveland Heights apartment overlooking Lake Erie. He hurled bottles of perfume, creams and lotions against the bathroom's tiled walls. In the living room he jerked pictures from their hangings, stamping his heel through glass and frames. With a leg broken from a chair, he wrecked the well-stocked bar and tore drapes from the windows. He roamed like some enraged ape from room to room, bent only on destruction. His eyes were black coals of fury and the normally handsome face a contorted mask. He behaved as though everything he touched and ruined was the soft yielding body of Jill Foster. There was murder in him and he cursed with appalling obscenity, low in tone, terrible in meaning.
His vanity screamed at the incredible outrage. The bitch! Always she had made him feel just a little uncomfortable, as though the clothes he wore were somehow just not right, his speech coarse, his manners clumsy. Her controlled behavior had always put him on the defensive. She remained aloof and in complete possession of herself. She had made him unsure of himself, although this was something he never admitted. And he, the sucker, had been taken in. To him, she had been more than just a private secretary. He had taken her with him when he traveled. He had never touched her. He had treated her like a lady. There had even been times when he thought about marrying her.
The humiliation gnawed at him, and he felt his fingers tighten as though her slim throat were grasped in their pressure. And all that time she had played him for a sucker. Widow of a pig. A snoopy bitch trying to get the goods on him. Shit!
He searched the bar for an unbroken bottle. The floor was littered with glass. Finally he found some bourbon in a cabinet. He opened it and drank from the bottle, carrying it with him to a chair by the window where he could look out upon the lake. The drapes of soft yellow with blue threads running through lay in an untidy heap. He kicked them aside.
Where the hell had she gone? Back to Baltimore? New York? Florida? California? He permitted himself a small smile, he knew damn well she didn't have much money. He took another drink. All of a sudden things had started going to hell. He threw the bottle against the opposite wall. He wanted Jill Foster and he would find her. Then he would see to it that she would know such agony and debasement beyond her wildest imagination. She would crawl, scream for mercy, plead for relief, search a faltering and panic-stricken mind for escape. He would destroy her honor and pride; the haughtiness with which she had always maintained herself.
He felt better now and the thin lips almost smiled. Reaching back to where the telephone lay upon the floor near an overturned table he picked it up, listened for a moment to the humming tone and then dialed slowly. He needed to make but one call. From this the order would be transmitted, fanning out through a vast invisible web. The boss wanted something done. Find a girl by the name of Jill Foster. Find her and take care of her good.
In a small apartment off El Camino Real Boulevard in Santa Barbara, Jill Foster stood at the window listening to the traffic headed for a Sunday's outing on the beach or the stretches of sand along the highway which skirted the coast all the way to San Francisco. She could hear the rushing sound of motors and tires but was not really aware of them. She was deep in thought.
Those thoughts were constantly on Matt as she waited out the lonely period until he returned from Mexico. True, it was not as bad as it might have been after that week at the Playa d'Oro had dissolved much too quickly. With Matt's help she had found the apartment and a job which occupied much of her time, but it was not the same without him around. She had found work as a hostess in one of the many restaurants in Santa Barbara, which really wasn't unpleasant work - taking customers to a table, laying the menus before them, supervising the service. The restaurant was within easy walking distance of her small apartment and when the place closed at ten o'clock she liked to stroll through the pleasant quiet rural atmosphere of the neighborhood even though it was part of a relatively large city. She would stop at a corner news vendor and buy a late edition of the Los Angeles Times to read with her morning coffee. She took this time in her life for what it was, a period of stagnation. It would be different when Matt returned. It would be incredible, she thought, if she hadn't met him and her life was reduced to nothing more than standing by the cashier's desk near the door, a sheaf of menus in her hand and a welcome smile on her face.