Shirley Murphy - Cat Pay the Devil

She didn’t ask him into the living room, didn’t ask him to sit down. She led him along the hall to a little bedroom on the first floor. “You’ll have to use the guest bath,” she said, pointing back toward the bath near the front door. “I’ll set out a towel. You’ll find sheets in the top drawer of that dresser. When you leave in the morning…” She gave him a hard look. “What makes you think you can get a motel tomorrow if they’re all full tonight?”

“I made me a reservation,” he lied. “It’s Sunday night, some of them tourists don’t leave till Monday morning. I got me a room for then, all fit and proper, soon as they’re made up, so I won’t burden you.”

Looking unconvinced, Lilly turned and left him.

He found sheets in a drawer, and spread them on the bed, listening hopefully for the sound of Lilly going upstairs to her room. He waited for a long time, but when he went to use the bathroom, the reading light was still on in the living room and he could hear the clicking of her knitting needles, could see her seated shadow reflected against the wall between two devil masks, her shadow hands twitching and jumping as she cast on stitches or whatever the hell knitters did.

He had to brush his teeth with his finger and lavender hand soap. Didn’t know why he bothered. The towel she’d left him was thin and had a hole in one corner. Why the hell didn’t she go on to bed? Returning irritably to the fusty little bedroom, he fidgeted and stewed, sat on the bed with the pillows behind him and thought about Cage’s stash.

He and Cage had brought most of it up from Central America packed in boxes of old books that were heavy. And the boxes stacked in with furniture, in one of them big, metal overseas containers. They’d had a regular mover in; that was when Sue left Greeley and he’d given up the apartment.

When they got back to the States and the stuff was delivered to where Cage was staying in the city, they’d made sure it was all there, then tossed the books in half a dozen Dumpsters. Sold the furniture. Cage said maybe some of them books was valuable, but how valuable could a bunch of old musty books be?

They’d waited a long time, years, for gold to hit eight hundred again, because that should nudge their prices up, too, but it never got that high. Inflation was up, though, and that was good. Then finally they’d lost patience and started making plans. Cage was inside at the time, he wrote that when he got out, they’d do it. If Greeley’d fly up, get his half wherever he had it, Cage’d take him to the best fence. Greeley never was much good at that part of it. He’d been good at making the heist, real good, and Cage owed him that, big-time.

Gold was what all them Latin American countries had been about, back in history, gold that brought them Spanish ships, had nothing to do with saving souls. Inca idols of solid gold near as big as a house, a whole garden made of life-size gold figures and animals, hard for a fellow to believe. Made what he and Cage brought back look like peanuts-but it was still worth plenty if they’d got full price. Fence, and his dealers, everyone took their damn cut.

Still, though, he’d have enough to set him up real nice, all he’d ever want. No more diving; he was tired of working for Panama. Buy him a nice little finca up in northern Panama, couple young Indian girls to do the cooking and warm his bed, a pretty nice retirement.

Sitting on the bed, he waited for over an hour, fidgeting, until he heard Lilly go up the stairs. When he looked out, the living room was dark. Standing in the hall he saw a faint light upstairs, from a room to his left. Returning to his room, he listened for some time more as she moved around above him getting ready for bed, listened to the water running in the upstairs bath. Didn’t like to think of that old turkey naked in the bath. Listened until the water gurgled out of the tub, and finally there was silence, sweet, unbroken silence. When he peered again up the stairway, all was dark above. He hoped she was a sound sleeper. Hoped to hell she didn’t come sneaking down and catch him. Because if Cage knew he’d searched the house, Cage’d kill him.

But by the time Cage found his stash gone, he, Greeley, would be where Cage wouldn’t ever find him. He sure wouldn’t find him through the Frisco fence. Greeley wouldn’t use him again, he had another contact, had lucked on to that one and had managed it all right; kept that guy under wraps, staked out and waiting. A short layover in Miami, sell the stuff and get his cash, and he was out of the States, where Cage’d never come looking.

W ilma watched Violet vanish behind the wall and listened to the soft hush of her footsteps on the bare, hidden stairs, footsteps with, it seemed to her, a stubborn finality. What a hard, cold young woman Violet was, despite her frail looks and uncertain ways. Wilma felt she had made no real connection with Violet, though certainly she’d tried.

Couldn’t Violet, with her deep fear of Eddie, relate to Wilma’s own fear and to the danger she faced? Wilma had seen no sympathy in her, no recognition of their mutual peril and vulnerability. Certain that she’d lost what might be her one chance for freedom, Wilma felt herself falling into a hopelessness that was not typical of her, that was not the way she looked at life. Cage could return at any moment, and the fear that he would kill her churned in Wilma’s stomach so hard that it brought bile to her throat. This was a kind of terror she had never known, nothing like the quick surge of fear that prodded one to action. That defensive fear sharpened a person, honed one’s perceptions and one’s responses. Instant, reactive fear was what she should have felt when Cage slipped up behind her undetected and shoved her in the car; her normal fear instinct should have triggered fast action, triggered a counterattack of violence, of the moves and blows in which she had been trained. Instead, she’d caved, had been too slow. And the helpless fear that washed over her now did no good at all.

Leaning backward into the drawer again, she resumed her frantic search for a knife. At one point, she had considered the stove that stood just beside her. It was gas, and she’d thought of lighting a burner, of trying to burn the ropes off. But that was a last resort, a move of terrible desperation. Third-degree burns hurt like hell, and could further incapacitate her.

There had to be another knife, no one could cook with only one. In order to search a drawer, she had to grasp its handle in her tied hands, and twist and hump the chair forward enough to pull the drawer to her; and the space was so small she couldn’t turn fully. Digging behind her, she sorted through unseen kitchen implements, a grater, a peeler, pushing them aside. Ladle and measuring spoons jumbled together. As she searched, she listened for sounds from above, and for the sound of the car returning. But suddenly-was that a blade beneath her fingers?

Yes! A paring knife. Small wooden handle, and not very sharp. Excitedly, she drew it out.

Holding it by the handle, the tip of the blade pointed toward her, she rested her bound wrists on the edge of the open drawer and, with that support, attempted awkwardly to slip the blade between her wrist and her bonds. It took her many tries. The knife kept slipping, she couldn’t get a grip that would allow her to twist it in the right direction. Twice she dropped it, but both times was lucky that it fell into the drawer-she daren’t drop it on the floor or she’d never be able to retrieve it. Working stubbornly, and cutting herself several times, she was able at last to slip the blade between wrist and rope in a way that gave her traction. The relief of that small accomplishment was amazing. She was sawing away at the rope, intent on gaining more pressure, when Violet spoke, making her jump.