“Why should it?” Gino was defiant. “What’s it to you?”
Again Ozzie found him funny. So did the others this time. They didn’t actually laugh, but their chuckles reverberated inside the big car. Finally, unable to stand the tension, Gino shouted, “Come on, what’s the big boff?”
“The boff is,” Ozzie said owlishly, “that Hugh Fellowes was the payoff man for the syndicate. That dough you lifted was syndicate money. You punks had the whole organization walking on its heels. Until your pal Mike walked in with that lighter this afternoon, it could have been foe Blow as far as we knew. We called a meeting and decided to let the cops handle it for us, and then you walk right through them, you and the girl. A lucky thing we were hanging around.”
“Not lucky,” said one of the sports jackets. “Just insurance.”
Gino felt himself begin to tremble. He was up against something he couldn’t hope to get through. He didn’t know what irony was but there was bitterness for him in the thought that this job, that was to open the syndicate door for him, had put him forever beyond the pale.
He heard Dora ask, as if from a long way off, “For God’s sake, what are you going to do to us?”
And he heard Ozzie reply, without raising his voice, “What do you think, girlie?”
You Can’t Kill Her
by C. B. Gilford
Jassie wanted Sarah to be happy — so he stopped her from shooting her drunken husband.
Jassie thought about her little white neck, and he thought about the coarse, rough hemp of the hangman’s noose coiling fatally around the soft, smooth, creamy-pale skin of it. That was why he pressed listening against the thin clapboard wall and wondered what he could do to save her.
It was a quiet night, lacking even animal sounds from out in the brush. There was no wind in the air, and the stars wheeled noiselessly through the sky. So Jassie could hear the two of them. He knew exactly what they said and what they did.
He knew, for instance, from the sound of the gurgling liquid, that Van was drinking. And he knew, to the ounce, how much. Half of what had been in the bottle. Enough to make even Van a little drunk.
And Sarah. It was harder to tell about her. There was the rustle of her skirt whenever she moved, and the muffled groan of floorboards complaining against her small weight. And when she sat, the sofa squeaked but once, and once again when she rose from it. In between times she must have stayed very still, looking at Van and listening to the same gurgling that Jassie heard.
Though she said very little, the tone of her words spoke a vast meaning. Shame, loathing. Bitter ingredients boiling and fermenting into hatred.
“Van,” she said once, “we can’t afford so much whiskey.”
“It’s cheaper here than in town,” he told her, and poured again.
Then later she asked him, for the thousandth time that Jassie had heard, “Why do you do it?”
He didn’t answer.
“This happens every night,” she went on. “This is all you do. Why? Why does it always have to be like this?”
His face must have been sneering, because he said, “A man’s got to have entertainment. It’s too far to go to town every night. I’ve got to have some entertainment, don’t I?”
Jassie felt the insult as keenly as she must have, and he cursed wordlessly to himself. But Sarah? She walked again, in Jassie’s direction, to the mirror that hung on that part of the wall where Jassie was listening. He heard her quick breathing, almost the beating of her heart. She was inspecting herself in the mirror.
The mirror would be kinder than Van. For Sarah was beautiful, and the mirror couldn’t lie. It would remind her that her hair was still dark and shining, unbleached by the scorching sun, and that her skin was still unmarred by six months of the desert wind. But small comfort for a woman like Sarah. Sarah needed more than a mirror to compliment and love her.
She walked again, across the room. Her steps seemed hurried, swift.
“Where are you going?” Van demanded.
The question halted her. “Outside,” she said.
He laughed, set down the bottle, and fought his way to his feet. “What for?” he persisted.
“Fresh air,” she told him. “This place stinks of you and your sour whiskey.”
Van moved then, crashing over a chair in his path. He got hold of her, because the door didn’t open though her skirt rustled angrily with her own violent motion. And when he had her, all sound ended, except their breathing, harsh and mingled.
Van’s bad breath being exhaled into her face. She would not ask him for release. Only her proud silence could be so eloquent of her nausea and disgust.
“I know where you’re going,” Van sniggered. “I just want to tell you that I’m not so dumb I don’t know where you’re going. You’re heading out back to pay Jassie a little visit.”
Pressed hard against the wall, Jassie’s big body shuddered. It was the passage of a vague, undefined, dimly realized longing. Anger overwhelmed it. Sarah was a good wife, so far as Jassie knew.
Sarah was angry also. Her voice was taut, like stretched steel wire. “I’ll likely go visiting some day,” she said. “But it won’t be with Jassie.”
She’d never threatened Van that way before. It surprised him, because he sucked in his breath audibly. Then came the sound of a blow, sharp, almost like a shot. Van’s big, calloused hand cracking hard against Sarah’s soft round cheek.
After that, the sounds were confusing to Jassie. There was a struggle of some kind. Van cursing, maybe trying to strike her again. Sarah fighting to get free of him. Van was drunk, unsteady. Sarah was agile and desperate. Jassie thought of the shotgun cradled on the wall near the front door. The thought terrified him.
He left his lean-to shed and ran. He could move fast, despite his great bulk and his limping, uneven gait. He ran around the house, careless of noise because he knew he would not be heard over the din inside. But when he reached the door he slowed, became cautious and silent as a cat. He used the knob with creeping patience, pushed the door ajar enough to see within.
And as he did, he heard Van say, in a scared, different voice, “Put that down, Sarah! Put it down!”
Sarah was nearest the door, but her back was turned to Jassie. She had the shotgun sure enough. It looked huge in her tiny grip, and were she to fire it, its rearward thrust would maul her soft body. The muzzle of the thing yawned toward Van. Over Sarah’s shoulder Jassie could see him, his face pale under its deep burn, his eyes bleary but suddenly sober, as if he’d just been awakened from his drunken stupor to find the Day of Judgment had arrived.
He saw Jassie. He was smart. Smart enough not to betray the thing he saw to Sarah. But his eyes gave clear instructions. “Grab her, Jassie.”
But it wasn’t for him that Jassie moved. It was for Sarah and her beautiful soft white neck, to save it from the cruel rope.
One step took Jassie to her. One of his hands snaked past her cheek and pushed the barrel of the gun aside. The other circled her across her shoulders, tightened in a sudden vise and held her.
She couldn’t pull the trigger, but she fought him. He realized her teeth had sunk themselves into the flesh of his forearm. Still he felt no pain. He was too aware of her writhing body pressed against his own. The fact of it sent chaos through his brain, left it helpless to direct his muscles. He could only hold her there.
So it was Van who took the gun away. Van, trembling from his release from fear. He grabbed the weapon from her, put it in its proper place. And then, quickly, to stop his trembling, he crossed to the table and poured himself a bracing drink.