Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

“Oh, crazy!” one of them yelled. “She jiggles!”

“Go ahead and scream your head off,” the yellow-haired one said. “Nobody can hear you, darling. The falls makes too much noise. We know, don’t we guys?”

“We know ev — ry — thing,” they chorused.

“‘Cause we come to this spot a lot,” the yellow-haired one said.

“What do you want?” Julia said.

“Strip, baby,” the yellow-haired one said. “Just strip, that’s all.”

“What? Dell — Dell!”

“Run, Julia!” Harper shouted. “For God’s sake, run!”

“Strip,” the yellow-haired one said. “Let’s see the goodies.”

“Are — are you crazy?” Julia said in a whisper. She started backing away from them. They were in a circle around her. One of them knocked his knee against her leg.

“Take your clothes off,” the yellow-haired one said. “Or we’ll do it for you. Whichever way you like, honey. We’re going to have a picnic, too — ‘cause we got your message.”

“What do you mean?” Julia said.

The yellow-haired one stepped up to her, grabbed the front of her jersey and yanked down on it, ripping it. Then he moved back again.

“Whichever way you want,” he said.

Julia Harper stared at them.

“We like to watch,” one said.

“Run,” her husband said. “Run, Julia — run.”

“Well?” the yellow-haired youth said.

Julia Harper looked at them, then slowly lifted her arms and pulled off the jersey. Then she went on just as the yellow-haired youth told her. There was silence now, with only the sound of the waterfall.

Occasionally, Harper heard her cry out. The last of them was over there behind those bushes with her now. Harper had shouted himself hoarse. He still tried to shout off and on. He stared, his eyes sick and gone. He was defeated.

The bushes were not high. Now and again he could see one of their heads come up above the bushes, grimacing. Twice he saw Julia’s feet. There was very little noise now. Finally, the fellows came out from behind the bushes, looked at Harper, then walked over to the car. The yellow-haired one, who had been playing with Linda, turned and walked over to Harper. The rest of them came along.

They did not speak. They just looked at him.

“I’ll get you,” Harper said. “Don’t ever forget that. I’ll get you — I’ll get you...”

They formed a straight line in front of Harper and looked down at him soberly and shook their heads in unison. They stood there shaking their heads for a few seconds. Then abruptly, they turned and ran for the yellow and chrome hot-rod, climbed in, and drove off.

Linda came and stood in front of her father and shook her head.

Harper screamed at her. “Stop — stop it!”

She giggled and began running in circles.

“Julia?” he called. “Julia — are you all right?”

He looked up and she had just stepped out from behind the bushes. She had her shorts on and the torn yellow jersey. She moved slowly and she looked pale and sheened with sweat, and as if she might have been crying. Her hair was damp and snarled, and brown pine needles clung in its dark richness. Lipstick was smeared all around her mouth.

“I couldn’t do anything,” Harper said. “Don’t look at me like that. There was nothing I could do. What could I do against all of them ? Untie me — quick.”

She untied him, and he saw the blazing anger and disgust in her eyes. She walked to the car and got in and sat there. Harper gathered the blankets, the picnic basket and put them in the car. He avoided the gallon thermos. He put Linda in the back seat, then quickly slid behind the wheel.

“We’ll call the cops,” he said. “Soon as we get to town. First phone we see. We’ll stop and phone the cops.”

Julia began sobbing, staring straight ahead.

He reached toward her, touched her shoulder. “You all right, we’ll stop at a hospital — right away.”

She spun away from him, turned and looked at him. Then she flipped the sun-visor down and looked at herself in the mirror. She found her white-beaded purse. Her hands were trembling. She took out her lipstick and as she began to outline her mouth in deep red, apparently oblivious to the way it was smeared, sobs broke convulsively from her.

“I couldn’t do anything,” Harper was saying. “They knocked the hell out of me, Julia. I couldn’t do any—”

“No! No! Of course not!” She threw her purse to one side, tears of anger and frustration streaming down her face. “They — they would’ve — beat you—”

“You saw how it was.”

“Oh, yes. Sure.” She was sobbing without restraint now. “I’m glad you didn’t — do anything.”

“What?” he said, thoroughly puzzled.

Julia straight-armed the sun visor back into place. “I said, I’m glad you didn’t do anything, Dell. Because I liked it, Dell. I liked every minute of it. Every God damned minute of it!”

The phone on the night table started to ring shrilly, discordantly. Johnny Liddell groaned, cursed softly, dug his head into the pillow, but the noise refused to go away. He opened one eye experimentally, peered at the half lowered shade and noted that it was still dark.

He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes, but it wouldn’t wipe away. The phone kept ringing. Finally, he reached out and lifted the receiver off its hook.

“Yeah?” he growled sleepily.

“This is Laury Lane. Come out here right away. That man of yours is going crazy and—” The voice was drowned out by the flat, ugly bark of a shot. The line went dead.

Liddell was suddenly wide awake. And ice cold. He started to jiggle the cross bar on the phone. “Hello. Hello.” The only answer was the soft click of a phone being hung up at the other end.

Liddell continued to jiggle the cross bar. The metallic voice of the operator cut in: “What number are you calling?”

“I’m not calling a number. Somebody was calling me. We’ve been cut off. Can you get them back?”

“I must have the number.”

Liddell growled deep in his chest. “Never mind, thanks. They’ll probably call back.” He tossed the receiver back on its hook, started stuffing his legs into his trousers. He headed for the bathroom, completed the waking-up process by splashing ice cold water into his face, then finished dressing. He shrugged into a shoulder harness, clipped his .45 into place, covering it with a jacket. He was headed for his garage less than ten minutes after the phone had started to ring.

Laury Lane lived in a small colony of two-acre plot estates just outside of Sands Point on Long Island’s North Shore. Johnny Liddell headed out Northern Boulevard, making the forty-minute ride in something short of a half hour.

The house itself was set back from the highway and shielded from the road by a row of evergreens. Liddell swung through the stone pillars that supported a rarely-closed iron gate, followed the short winding driveway to the house. There were two other cars parked in front of the garage, on the concrete apron. Liddell left his in front of the house, walked up the two steps to the door.

There were no lights in the hall, but he could see a triangle of yellow light toward the back of the house were it spilled from an open door. He debated the advisibility of walking around back, decided to knock.

Almost immediately the door opened and he could make out the bulky figure of a man silhouetted in the opening.

“I’m Johnny Liddell. I want to see Miss Lane.”

The door opened wider. “Come on in.” The man stepped aside, waited until Liddell had entered, fell in behind him. “Straight ahead to the study.”