Seconds later, as Max opened the door, heavy footsteps sounded on the stoop and Jill whirled about. “Oh, my god, it’s Bill!” she gasped.
It was Bill, with a gun in hand. “Get back in that taxi and wait for me,” he said. “And you, run.” He shoved the gun in little Max’s ribs. “Back in the house.” Stunned and speechless, Max obeyed.
In less than a minute, Bill stepped out the front door of the brownstone, calmly descended the stoop and got into the cab. Calmly, he lit a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke and glanced over at Jill. “Well,” she said. “Well, what?” he snapped. “It’s all over, finished — kaput. What do you want me to do, write you a letter or count the money right here?”
“That might be a good idea,” Jill answered, “but did you get it all?”
“I’m a hungry guy. I made sure.”
“And the plane tickets?”
“Yeah.” Patting a pocket.
“What about Max?”
“What about him?”
“Did you hurt him?”
“A bit. He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Poor little Max.”
“Yeah, you’re sorry for him now, but you wanted the money. You’re greedier than I am.”
“And smarter. I set the whole thing up.”
“Sure, you did, and you had your fun with Max while you were at it, while I was sucking my thumb and waiting six months until you talked him out of taking his money from the bank.”
“I couldn’t rush things and scare him off, you know.”
“Yeah, you couldn’t — but six months?” Bill snorted. “You must have liked his style.”
“Well, he was a gentleman.”
“Even in bed?”
“Yes, even in bed. Listen, for your information, no guy’s a gentleman in bed. We’re all animals.”
“You mean, like you?”
Bill’s hand came up, slapped her across the mouth and the taxi braked to a halt. “You wait here. I forgot something upstairs,” Bill said. He had the forty thousand dollars in a brown paper bag and was about to hand it to Jill, then stopped himself and said, “I better take this with me.”
“What’s the matter, you don’t trust me now?” Jill snapped.
“Baby, with forty thousand, I don’t even trust myself.”
Two minutes later, in their apartment, he picked up the phone in the bedroom, dialed a number and a woman answered.
“Hey, I got it,” he said. “We’re on the way. Meet me at the airport, at the spot. Jill? After we check in at the ticket counter, I’ll dump her and pick you up. No, she won’t go to the police. She can’t, or she’ll hang with me. See you at the airport, baby.”
With that, he hung up and had started to cross the room toward the bed where his topcoat lay when he noticed the lipstick message on the vanity mirror. Goodbye, Animal, hey? Well goodbye to you too, he thought.
A sound behind him alerted him, but too late. A blunt instrument dropped him in his tracks.
Jill turned when the cabbie came out the door of the apartment house and climbed behind the wheel of the taxi. As he started the motor, she leaned forward.
“Have you got the money, Jim?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s in the bag?”
“And the plane tickets?”
“In my pocket,” Jim answered and the he laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jill asked.
“That message you wrote to Bill on the vanity.”
“Do you think he saw it?”
“He was looking at it when I hit him, so maybe he did, but let’s get to the airport before our plane takes off.”
The Questionable Cure
by Lorraine Marise
David had to keep Marla from talking or he would lose his psychiatrist’s licence — and murder was his only out!
He worked the credit card between the door and the door jamb and thanked his lucky stars she hadn’t changed the worthless lock, as he had suggested. He turned the knob and the door slid open an inch. He squinted his eyes and peered through the crack.
The entry was dark. The living room was dark. There was a glimmer of light coming from the direction of the kitchen, but it was so faint he knew it could only be coming from the tiny bulb on the stove, which Marla used as a highlight.
He slipped the credit card back into his pocket and, with two gloved hands, pushed the door open, just wide enough for him to slide through. With one hand on the inside knob and one on the wood above it, he eased the door closed.
Click.
Oh, God, she heard! She heard me coming, his mind cried. He stood silently, motionlessly, his skin prickling with fear. A strange feeling rushed over him. It was the first time he had ever had this feeling, but he recognized it immediately as one his patients had so often described.
Suddenly, everything seemed exaggerated, out of proportion. The dim little bulb in the kitchen seemed to flood the entry with brilliance. His heart was pounding so loudly, it was setting off explosions in his ears. His breath was gusting in and out with the whooosh of a tornado.
The garrote in his back pocket bulged out grotesquely from his hip, like a third leg. Fragmented thoughts pierced his mind like daggers. Marla can hear me. She knows. She knows I’m here to kill her. Bang! Whooosh! Bang!
He shook his head to exorcise the feeling. Get hold of yourself, he thought. She cannot hear your breath, your heartbeat. She does not know. You are becoming as psychotic as your patients. Settle down. It will all be over soon.
He breathed in and out slowly, deliberately, until the explosions were only dull thuds beneath his suit coat. If there were another way, I would take it, he told himself. But there is not. Marla has given me no choice. I must kill her tonight.
He took two silent steps to the wrought iron divider at the right, which separated the entry from the living room.
Wait! I hear voices, his mind screamed. She has someone here to protect her. She knows! He held his breath and listened. Oh, thank God! It’s the television. Marla is watching television.
He pulled himself up to the divider and pressed his face against the cold latticework. He rolled his left cheek to the metal to scan the far right wall of the living room. Through the darkness, he could see the open doorway there, as a rainbow of light danced on the wall of the hallway. Yes. The voices were from the television set in the den at the end of the hallway, he assured himself. He put his weight back onto his heels, pulling his face from the divider.
If only she hadn’t threatened to turn me in to the authorities tomorrow. I abhor violence. I am not a killer, but she is making me kill. If I don’t, she will tell... who? The State Board of Psychiatrists? The American Medical Association? The police?
She will tell them I forced her into an affair on the guise of it being therapy for her problem. And they will believe her! How better could I dispel her fear that she was turning homosexual, than to show her she could still enjoy a relationship with a man. Oh, they will believe her, even thought it is not true — not true...
Our affair did not begin until after her third session, after I had already evoked her cure. But they will believe her, and they will take away my license, my livelihood. I cannot let that happen.