Vengeance Is Mine

“Wonderful.”

“It was special, you know. I’ve been home every minute since I saw you last, waiting for you to come back.”

She sat next to me on the couch and leaned back, her head resting on the cushion. Her eyes were beginning to invite me now. “I’ve been busy, goddess. Things have been happening.”

“Things?”

“Business.”

One of her fingers touched the bruise on the side of my jaw.

“How’d you get that, Mike?”

“Business.”

She started to laugh, then saw the seriousness in my face. “But how . . .”

“It makes nasty conversation, Juno. Some other time I’ll tell you about it.”

“All right, Mike.” She put her cigarette down on the table and grabbed my hand. “Dance with me, Mike?” She made my name sound like it was something special.

Her body was warm and supple, the music alive with rhythm, and together we threw a whirling pattern of shadows that swayed and swung with every subtle note. She stood back from me, just far enough so we could look at each other and read things into every expression. I could only stand it so long and I tried to pull her closer, but she laughed a little song and twisted in a graceful pirouette that sent the gown out and up around her legs.

The music stopped then, ending on a low note that was the cue to a slow waltz. Juno floated back into my arms and I shook my head. It had been enough . . . too much. The suggestion she had put into the dance left me shaking from head to foot, a sensation born of something entirely new, something I had never felt. Not the primitive animal reflex I was used to, not the passion that made you want to squeeze or bite or demand what you want and get it even if you had to fight for it. It made me mad because I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t like it, this custom of the gods.

So I shook my head again, harder this time. I grabbed her by the arm and heard her laugh again because she knew what was going on inside me and wanted it that way.

“Quit it, Juno. Damn it, quit fooling around. You make me think I want you and I lose sight of everything else. Cut it out.”

“No.” She drew the word out. Her eyes were half closed. “It’s me that wants you, Mike. I’ll do what I can to get you. I won’t stop. There’s never been anyone else like you.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

It might have been now, but the light caught her hair again. Yellow candlelight that changed its color to the gold I hated. I didn’t wait to have it happen to me. I shoved her on the couch and reached for the decanter in the bar set. She lay there languidly, waiting for me to come to her and I fought it and fought it until my mind was my own again and I could laugh a little bit myself. She saw it happen and smiled gently. “You’re even better than

I thought,” she said. “You’re a man with the instincts of some

jungle animal. It has to be when you say so, doesn’t it?” I threw the drink down fast. “Not before,” I told her. “I like that about you too, Mike.”

“So do I. It keeps me out of trouble.” When I filled the glass I balanced it in my hand and sat on the arm of the couch facing her. “Do you know much about me, Juno?”

“A little. I’ve been hearing things.” She picked one of her long cigarettes out of the box and lit it. Smoke streamed up lazily from her mouth. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you why I’m like I am. I’m a detective. In spirit only, now, but I used to have a ticket and a gun. They took it away because I was with Chester Wheeler when he used my gun to commit suicide. That was wrong because Chester Wheeler was murdered. A guy named Rainey was murdered too. Two killings and a lot of scared people. The one you know as Clyde is a former punk named Dinky Williams and he’s gotten to be so big nobody can lay a finger on him, so big he can dictate to the dictators.

“That isn’t the end of it, either. Somebody wants me out of the way so badly they made a try on the street and again in my apartment. In between they tried to lay Rainey’s killing at my feet so I’d get picked up for it. All that . . . because one guy named Chester Wheeler was found dead in a hotel room. Pretty, isn’t it?”

It was too much for her to understand at once. She bit her thumbnail and a frown crept across her face. “Mike . . .”

“I know it’s complicated,” I said. “Murder generally is complicated. It’s so damn complicated that I’m the only one looking for a murderer. All the others are content to let it rest as suicide . . . except Rainey, of course. That job was a dilly.”

“That’s awful, Mike! I never realized . . .”

“It isn’t over yet. I have a couple of ideas sticking pins in my brain right now. Some of the pieces are trying to fit together, trying hard. I’ve been up too long and been through too much to think straight. I thought that I might relax if I came up here to see you.” I grinned at her. “You weren’t any help at all. You’ll probably even spoil my dreams.”

“I hope I do,” she said impishly.

“I’m going someplace and sleep it off,” I said. “I’m going to let the clock go all the way around, then maybe once more before

I stir out of my sack. Then I’m going to put all the pieces together and find me a killer. The bastard is strong . . . strong enough to twist a gun around in Wheeler’s hand and make him blow his brains out. He’s strong enough to take me in my own joint and nearly finish it for me. The next time will be different. I’ll be ready and I’ll choke the son-of-a-bitch to death.”

“Will you come back when it’s over, Mike?”

I put on my hat and looked down at her. She looked so damn desirable and agreeable I wanted to stay. I said, “I’ll be back, Juno. You can dance for me again . . . all by yourself. I’ll sit down and watch you dance and you can show me how you have fun on Olympus. I’m getting a little tired of being a mortal.”

“I’ll dance for you, Mike. I’ll show you things you never saw before. You’ll like Olympus. It’s different up there and there’s nothing like it on this earth. We’ll have a mountaintop all to ourselves and I’ll make you want to stay there forever.”

“It’d take a good woman to make me stay anywhere very long.”

Her tongue flicked out and left her lips glistening wetly, reflecting the desire in her eyes. Her body seemed to move, squirm, so the sheen of the housecoat threw back the lithe contours of her body, vivid in detail. “I could,” she said.

She was asking me now. Demanding that I come to her for even a moment and rip that damn robe right off her back and see what it was that went to make up the flesh of a goddess. For one second my face must have changed and she thought I was going to do it, because her eyes went wide and I saw her shoulders twitch and this time there was woman-fear behind the desire and she was a mortal for an instant, a female crouching away from the male. But that wasn’t what made me stop. My face went the way it did because there was something else again I couldn’t understand and it snaked up my back and my hands started to jerk unconsciously with it.

I picked up my butts and winked good night. The look she sent me made my spine crawl again. I walked out and found my car half buried in a drift and drove back to the street of lights where I parked and checked into a hotel for a long winter’s nap.

Chapter Ten

I slept the sleep of the dead, but the dead weren’t disturbed by dreams of the living. I slept and I talked, hearing my own voice in the stillness. The voice asked questions, demanded answers that couldn’t be given and turned into a spasm of rage. Faces came to me, drifting by in a ghostly procession, laughing with all the fury the dead could command, bringing with their laughter that weird, crazy music that beat and beat and beat, trying to drive my senses to the furthermost part of my brain from which they could never return. My voice shouted for it to stop and was drowned in the sea of laughter. Always those faces. Always that one face with the golden hair, hair so intensely brilliant it was almost white. The voice I tried to scream with was only a hoarse, muted whisper saying, “Charlotte, Charlotte . . . I’ll kill you again if I have to! I’ll kill you again, Charlotte!” And the music increased in tempo and volume, pounding and beating and vibrating with such insistence that I began to fall before it. The face with the gold hair laughed anew and urged the music on. Then there was another face, one with hair a raven-black, darker than the darkness of the pit. A face with clean beauty and a strength to face even the dead. It challenged the golden hair and the music, commanding it to stop, to disappear forever. And it did. I heard my voice again saying over and over, “Velda, thank God! Velda, Velda, Velda.”