The Long Wait (34 page)

The bra had another zipper. It was right down the middle and she opened it with two fingers. Her breasts were alive and vibrant, a lighter tan than the rest of her, standing firm and proud in the excitement that coursed through her body. Her shoulders were wide and square, a sleek taper down to her waist.

My mouth felt drawn and it wasn't as easy to speak any longer. “You dug up a lot of information on friend Tucker in a hurry. I bet you and Nick put in many a week collecting all the stuff you had in that package. Instead of looking around like I wanted you to you sat in the beauty parlor and had your hair done to waste time.”

She was almost ready to do it. My whole body started to crawl. The belt was limp in my hand.

“You had a lot of handy information about Everybody. You knew about Harlan and made sure I knew it with that ad in the paper and that phone call. You knew right where to steer me for more information. You had a long time to figure out the angles and knew just what was what. All you needed was a strong arm to make the play for you. All I want to know is why, Vera. You won't die like the rest, but you'll hurt like hell for a long time and always show the marks. I'd just like to know why. Johnny was such a nice guy.”

She didn't answer me. Her forefingers ran under the elastic of the panties, then they unfolded down around her hips. She stepped out of them, held them up, then tossed them casually after the other things. She stood there like a statue, naked except for her shoes, her hands leaning on the dresser behind her.

I looked at her hungrily, knowing it would be the last time I'd see her so nakedly beautiful. My head nodded and the belt swung in my hand again. “It was a good gimmick, Vera. A lovely disguise. A natural blonde making herself an unnatural blonde right down to phony dark roots. The hairdresser must have had a hell of a time, but it was a nice trick in case somebody looked too close and thought you were familiar. It would fool anybody.

“No wonder you didn't want me to see you in the light without any clothes on.” My mouth felt dry. There was a nasty taste behind my teeth. “It's been a long wait, Vera. You've changed a lot since that picture Logan gave me of you was taken, but you're still beautiful. Johnny must have suffered every time he thought of you. It's been one hell of a long wait but you're finally going to suffer a little bit like Johnny did.”

I raised the strap.

The dresser drawer opened and shut fast and she was pointing a gun at me. It was a little gun, but big enough. I had talked myself right into another trap again.

Her face was a curious mixture of emotion. She pointed the gun at the dressing table beside me. “Look in the top drawer.”

I was so damned mad I could hardly move. I was nearly ready to let her shoot then knock her teeth out with the barrel and if the same curious emotion that was in her face hadn't been in her voice too I would have.

I opened the top drawer. I was looking at myself again. A lot of George Wilsons. “Nick had them too.”

“Look at the date.”

At the bottom of each one was a stamped date of delivery with notice to post. The ones on the bottom of the pile went back seven years.

She watched me until I shut the drawer. “I've known about George Wilson ever since Johnny McBride left town. Nick has always had them. It scared me until we learned that George Wilson was wanted long before anything ever happened to Johnny. Now look in the next drawer.”

My mind was numb. I felt cold all over. A lot of crazy things were going on in my head and I couldn't understand it. I opened that drawer and emptied an envelope out on the dresser. There was a deed there to the house on Pontiel Road made out to John McBride. There was an army discharge certificate and a letter from the War Department.

“Read it,” she said.

The letter was a full account of the war activities of John McBride. It told in detail that he had been trained for special work and operated behind the enemy lines on secret missions that included one of the successful coups of the war when he entered a German Command Headquarters building and relieved a safe of a document that listed German agents working in Allied zones.

My mind was a mad frenzy of thoughts shuttling back and forth too fast to make sense. They shrieked and hammered to be recognized and beat against my skull in despair when I couldn't sort them out.

Her voice was a soothing liquid washing away at the pain of it all. “If George Wilson was wanted, and if a certain doubly remarkable coincidence happened ... first meeting a man who was so like him they couldn't be told apart, and secondly having that man lose his memory in an accident ... he certainly would take advantage of that situation, don't you think? He could change identities and no one would be the wiser. Why, he even might have planned to kill this person and let the body be identified as himself until he actually discovered that there had been a memory loss.

“After that it would even be profitable to keep him alive. If the police ever did stumble on him they would have the wrong person entirely. It was such a profitable scheme that he died to keep this person alive. When you think of it, that one wasn't a friend, but the worst enemy a man could have.”

It was too much for me. My teeth grated as I kept them together.

“That is,” she added, “if my supposition is true. Did you ever wonder why I let you make love to me? I thought I could tell. I'm still not too sure. But like you did me, I'll give you every chance. Take off your clothes.”

I looked at her foolishly.

She meant it. The gun was still there on my stomach.

I took off my clothes.

“Johnny McBride had a scar exactly like that on his stomach,” she said.

I looked at it. Often I wondered how I had gotten it. She knew what I was thinking.

“It's described in that army medical report in the envelope,” she said.

And she was right.

The pieces came flying back together. They were all there and not making much sense but there were enough of them so that I knew I would have it all some day. Little bits of jagged information. Things like the way I felt outside the Minnow house. Why a gun was so natural in my hand. It was too big to take all at once and I tried to put it out of my mind.

I dropped my head in my hands and pressed them against my face. Vera's voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Now I'll tell you why I did it, Johnny. I was never part of them. Gardiner told you to check those books and I saw you with them. I actually thought you did steal that money. You had bought this house and gave me ten thousand dollars to put away for us and wouldn't say where you got it. It was a long time before I found out it represented everything you had ever saved.

“You see, Bob Minnow suspected something at the bank.

He asked me privately to keep my eyes open and told me enough so that I had an idea what he was looking for. When I thought you were responsible for the theft and thought you did it to finance Servo, I went directly to Lenny to learn the truth for myself. Bob Minnow was shot in the meantime. I thought you did that too, but I still loved you. Lenny had you picked up at that vacation resort and had you hidden at your place. He gave me a choice ... play along with him and let you get away, or turn you over to Lindsey. I didn't know then that they planned to let you get away anyway.

“I did it, Johnny. I'm not sorry for what I did. I stayed with Lenny until I realized that he was under somebody else's orders and did a little inquiring on my own. I checked on the bank and on Harlan and on Servo. During that time they found out what I was doing. I ran too.”

I saw the gun drop. It fell at her feet and landed on the skirt.

“I've been waiting, Johnny. Like you said, it's been a long wait, but I knew you'd come back someday.”

There never had been any hardness about her. There was just beauty. And love. A crazy kind of love. A wonderful kind of love. It happened to me before and it was happening to me all over again. We were there in the bedroom stark naked with two guns on the floor shaking from an excitement that was bigger than the whole night put together.

She was smiling at me.

She said, “Johnny, empty out that envelope.”

My hand reached for it and it spilled all over the floor. It was filled with documents, but one was bigger than the rest. I could see what it said without picking it up. It was a marriage license issued to John McBride and Vera West and the date was a month before anything had happened.

“That's how I knew about the scar,” she told me.

Her eyes were dancing.

I was hurting all over my body and inside my head. I was tired, dead tired.

But not that hurt and not that tired. We looked at the bed together. Her hand went out to the light.

I touched her. She was soft and warm. Beautiful. Mine.

“Leave the lights on,” I said.

 

THE END