The arm around Willie’s chest moved swiftly to his throat. For a second the boy was free. He gasped, jerked forward, and tried to roll away. But a wire sank into his throat.
One tender, spicing cut. Closing off his breath. Stars flying, bursting crazily inside his head, plummeting into endless black space. A snap. The heart fluttering, a weak bird against the constriction of a cage.
Willie DeShane fought to the final second, and then he gave up his life, his body shuddering delicately in the arms of a killer, his green eyes filming over, reflecting the cold, merciless light of the stars as they began to twinkle in the growing darkness.
CHAPTER 9
IT WAS EARLY EVENING at the Ringer house and the three people living there were tense and morose.
Nick was in an especially bad mood. For months he had insisted Madra, this “handmaiden to a Paris fag,” this ” bride of Dracula,” this “poor little peasant girl with the starry eyes,” had to be disposed of—let go, run off, sent away. Daley ignored the verbal abuse when he could, but lately his own temper erupted more often, and he found himself out-shouting his brother simply to be heard.
Madra, on the other hand, was coming close to imitating an incoherent babbler. The seizures that surfaced soon after she moved in and grew steadily worse as the emotional atmosphere in the house grew more tense.
For a long time Daley did not know what was wrong. For a while he thought her merely dreamy, preoccupied, perhaps absentminded. But when the dazed looks came so frequently they frightened him, he searched the college library for medical books to pinpoint the problem. It did not take long. Madra’s symptoms were more blatant than ever. Five-second trances grew to a full minute. There were times when she was absolutely unaware of her surroundings.
Epilepsy. Mild form that resulted in lost of consciousness. Petit mal.
Daley worried, but he did not tell Madra what he had discovered. She called it daydreaming, and she was close enough. If only Nick would leave her alone. Couldn’t he see Madra was a woman with troubles?
Perhaps Daley would speak to his brother after dinner. This constant bickering was too hard on all of them.
Madra had cooked pasta. The spaghetti sauce had simmered all day, and the delicious smell of garlic, onion, and oregano permeated the house. It smelled wonderfully homey, unlike anything the brothers were used to. At the table, however, Nick looked up from his place and gave Daley a nasty grin. Daley knew what was coming.
“Too much tomato paste,” Nick commented dryly, sampling a forkful of steaming spaghetti, the sauce dripping onto his plate. “Tastes like an acid bath.”
Madra quietly stood and wrapped the cape over her shoulders. She tied it at the neck, then sat down stiffly.
Nick grinned, and at that moment Daley hated him. Why did his brother work so hard at being disagreeable?
“Too much salt too. Did you dump the Morton’s box in it, Madra?” Nick asked conversationally.
“Nick. Drop it,” Daley saw Madra’s eyelids fluttering. She had not looked at either man.
“I ought to drop it. Right on the goddamn floor.”
“Don’t pay him any attention, Madra. It’s delicious,” Daley said as he patted her hand.
“It fucking stinks. I think you should go back to cooking, Daley. I don’t like wop food anyway. Gives me heartburn.”
“You don’t have to eat it,” Madra said softly, her eyes still staring at the table.
“What choice do I have? What am I gonna fucking eat around here, peanut butter?” Nick asked.
With a sudden flourish that took both men by surprise, Madra stood up and threw back the sides of her cape, her chair falling to the floor several feet behind her.
“Oh, what now, another dramatic crying fit? Gonna rush from the room, baby? Huh? Huh? Quick, I can’t wait.” Nick clapped his hands in glee.
Madra marched into the kitchen and sank to the floor in front of the sink. Daley got to his feet, afraid she had fainted or was having a convulsion. But she had the lower cabinet doors open and was searching for something inside.
Nick turned around in his chair. “What the fuck’s she doing?”
“Can it, Nick. You’re going too far,” Daley warned.
She stood up, the folds of the cape closed in front of her. She was rigid and ghostly coming toward them without a hint of expression on her face. She walked to Nick’s place at the table and halted. While Daley watched in fascination, and Nick watched in horror, Madra slowly withdrew her hand from the cape—and with it a tiny gray mouse, its head flattened and bloody from the mousetrap it had been caught in. Carefully Madra laid the mouse crossways on Nick’s plate of food.
“This is probably more to your liking,” she said softly, and left the room, the cape thrown back and trailing behind her.
“Jesus Fuckin’ Christ!” Nick screamed as he overturned his chair trying to get away from the dead mouse in his plate. “Bitch!” He hurled his plate at the wall where the spaghetti dribbled to the floor. The dead mouse bounced back to lie at his feet. “Not in my food!” he shrieked, slamming both his fists to the table, overturning the glasses. “Not in my… not in my…”
Daley was roaring with laughter, holding onto the table for support, his stomach aching, his eyes welling with tears at the unexpectedness of the scene.
“Look what she did!” Nick continued to bellow. “I can’t believe what she fucking did, Daley!”
Daley still was holding himself around the middle. He was laughing so hard it hurt to try to get his breath.
A dead mouse in his brother’s plate! Even he had never done anything so outrageous as that to his brother, his big, frightening monster of a brother.
Finally Daley noticed the ominous silence and straightened up to find Nick glaring at him. The room’s temperature dropped twenty degrees. The giggles suddenly dried up. Daley’s hands dropped to his sides and he had to look away from Nick.
“That was pretty cute,” Nick said harshly. “She’s a winner, this girl of yours.”
“It was a joke, Nick. You asked for it. Don’t be a badass and pretend you’re an injured party.” Daley was determined that if this had to turn into a battle of the wills, he would be ready for it. He might not win it, but he’d be ready.
“I want her out of here,” Nick said flatly.
“You don’t have any say about it. I pay my half of the rent. She stays.” Daley paused for emphasis. “And you lay off her.”
Nick’s lips moved as if he wanted to say more, but nothing came out. Daley threw the cloth napkin he still clutched in his hand against the table. At the doorway he turned and repeated, “Lay off her. “
Madra had listened to Daley’s hysterical laughter and Nick’s furious shouts as they drifted up the stairway to the bedroom. She had undressed, placing the black cape over the back of a wooden chair Daley was about to refinish, and donned a flannel nightgown that touched the floor when she walked. She sat cross-legged on the bed, listening, occasionally smiling at what she had done.
Nick deserved his comeuppance, she thought, fingering the massed gown in her lap. He’s always trying to get me; let’s see how he likes feeling like a fool for once.
She heard Daley coming up the stairs. Madra lifted her gaze, expecting him to appear in the doorway.
When he did not, she slipped from the bed and crept to the hall.
The bathroom door stood open. Walking on tiptoe, thinking she would surprise him and make him laugh even more, Madra made her way down the dim hallway. She stuck her head around the corner and opened her mouth to repeat a snatch of poetry from one of Emily’s poems only to be surprised herself. Daley was not in the bathroom.