Bill Pronzini: Vixen

It was easy! I didn’t put the moves on her, she put them on me! But he shook his head, didn’t say anything.

“How long has it been going on? How long?”

“Back off, damn you.”

“Answer me. How easy? How long?”

“No. Get out of here.”

“Not until you tell me the truth, admit what a scumbag you are.”

“I’m not going to admit anything to you.”

“She’s mine, Chaleen. You hear me?” Another jab, two fingers this time and hard enough to hurt. “She made a stupid mistake with you and she knows it. Now I want to hear you say you know it. Say ‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’ Say ‘I won’t go near her from now on.’”

Anger swelled in Chaleen; he swatted the thrusting hand away. “And if I don’t?”

“You will, by God, if you know what’s good for you. ‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’ Say it.”

“No!”

“I’m not leaving until you do. Neither are you.”

“You want me to call the cops? Trespassing on private property, making a lot of crazy accusations, threatening me—”

“What do you need the cops for? Why don’t you go ahead and throw me out yourself?”

Chaleen could feel himself sweating. He had five years, ten pounds, and a couple of inches on Vorhees, but the bastard was in better shape, had done some boxing in college.

“I’m warning you—”

Vorhees laughed in his face. “Afraid to brawl with me? Sure you are. Just like that night at the Red Fox.”

“That was a public place, this is my private office—”

“You didn’t have the balls then, you don’t have the balls now. You’re a coward, Chaleen.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“A sly, sneaky coward. Always have been, always will be.”

“I’m not a coward!”

“Prove it. Come on, coward, show me I’m wrong, show me how much you hate my guts.”

The anger was a roaring in Chaleen’s head now, but it still wasn’t hot enough to burn away the fear. He stood there flat-footed, sweating.

“All right then,” Vorhees said, “I’ll show you how much I hate yours.”

When the jab came this time, it was with the heel of Vorhees’ hand — a blow with enough force to drive Chaleen backward. His feet tangled together; he fell sideways into his desk chair, skidding it, then upending it so that when he caromed off onto the floor the chair clattered over on top of him. One of the padded arms slammed into his chin, jammed the back of his head and neck into the carpet.

A sunburst of pain swirled fear and anger together, dizzied his thoughts, distorted his hearing so that Vorhees’ voice saying, “Get up, you’re not hurt,” seemed to come humming from a distance. It was his hands and fingers that reacted, without conscious will, as if they were independent entities: shoving the chair off, reaching upward to clutch and hang onto the edge of the desk and lift himself onto his feet.

“‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’” Vorhees’ voice was clearer now, the words arrogant, commanding. “‘I’ll never go near her again.’”

Chaleen leaned shakily on the desktop. He heard himself say in a cracked voice, “Get away, get out.”

“‘She’s yours, Andy, all yours.’”

“Get out, get out!”

Through a haze of pain and sweat he saw Vorhees come toward him, felt a handful of his shirt caught and bunched and his body jerked close. “Say it, you piece of shit!”

Again it was the fingers of his right hand that reacted without conscious thought. Scrabbled forward, touched the coldness of the heavy rose quartz paperweight, gathered it into his palm—

“Say it!”

— and blindly, then, his arm swung up and swept around, and he heard the crunch of stone meeting flesh and bone, felt warm wet droplets spatter his face, felt the grip on his shirtfront release. His fingers went nerveless; the paperweight bounced, rolled on the desktop. Shock waves rolled through him. Clearly, then, he saw Vorhees still standing, a look of disbelief on his face, the extended hand fluttering as if with sudden palsy, a crimson and bone-white hole in his forehead where the left eyebrow had been.

“No,” Chaleen said, “no, I didn’t mean—”

Vorhees’ eyes glazed over and he collapsed into a loose bundle on the carpet.

Numbly, Chaleen stared down at him. It seemed like a long time before he could make his legs carry him forward. In what felt like slow-motion movements, he lowered himself to one knee beside Vorhees, fumbled for a pulse that wasn’t there.

Dead.

Dead!

Nausea churned in his stomach, funneled bile into his throat. He lurched to his feet, stumbled around the couch into the bathroom, reached the toilet just as the scotch came boiling and burning out of him. He hung there, retching, until there was nothing left. At the sink then, not looking into the mirror before or after, he scrubbed the blood spatters off his face. His hands still shook badly when he was done; his breathing was erratic, he couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen into his lungs.

In his office again, not looking at what lay on the carpet, he took two long pulls from the bottle of Glenlivet. The whiskey burned like fire, stayed down, but did little to quiet his screaming nerves or ease the feeling of suffocation. Unsteadily, he went through the front office, opened the outer door, stepped outside to suck in deep breaths of the cold night air—

Christ! Vorhees had left the gates standing wide open.

The thought that somebody, one of the homeless that hung around the area, might’ve come wandering in ran a shudder through Chaleen. No cars on the street now, nobody in sight, but he ran across the night-lit yard anyway, closed the gate, snapped the padlock. His chest heaved like a bellows on the way back.

Inside again, he locked the outer door. Sat down at Abby’s desk to try to get his breathing under control, try to think.

What was he going to do?

Dead man in his office. Bastard deserved to die, but not like this, not here. The other night with Margaret had been bad enough, but all he’d had to do then was make sure she drank enough to pass out, then carry her out to the garage and fire up her Mercedes. No blood, no violence, no body to worry about. And he hadn’t had to watch her die.

But it wasn’t a detached murder this time, wasn’t murder at all. Vorhees had hit him, knocked him down, grabbed him, threatened him... he’d acted in self-defense. Call the police? Tell them how Vorhees had bulled in here, but not the reason, and then the rest of it just as it had happened. They’d believe him. Wouldn’t they?

Maybe they wouldn’t. No marks on him to show that he’d been attacked; he felt his head and neck to be sure. Common knowledge that he and Vorhees had had trouble before. There’d be an investigation and the cops would find out about him and Cory from those two private dicks. And what if they got it in their heads to question Margaret’s death despite the accident verdict, somehow managed to tie him to it? He wasn’t sure he was in any shape to stand up to police questioning tonight, or at any time. Calling the law was out, it would only make things worse.

Get rid of the body. That was what he had to do. Take it somewhere and hide it, bury it, or at least make it look like Vorhees was killed someplace else by somebody else. But what about Vorhees’ car? That damn Aston was parked right out front. He couldn’t leave it there, and he couldn’t drive two cars. Didn’t dare run the risk of ditching the Aston after ditching the body and then taking a taxi or public transportation to come back for his Caddy—

Cory!

She’d know what to do, she’d help him. Call her, explain what had happened, tell her—

Tell her he’d just killed her future husband, the man who was going to make her rich? Tell her all her carefully laid plans had been for nothing and both of them might be up shit creek now? She wouldn’t care that it had been self-defense, she’d blame him for letting it happen. Never forgive him, never let him near her again. He’d lose her for good.