The Dark Half(45)

He showed her the straight-razor. Her eyes, which had been dazed and cloudy, came alert and opened wide. Her wet red mouth opened.

'Make a sound and I'll cut you, sis,' he said, and her mouth closed. He wound a hand in her hair again and pulled her into the living room. Her skirt whispered on the polished wood floor. Her butt caught a throw-rug and it snowplowed beneath her. She moaned in pain.

'Don't do that,' he said. 'I told you.'

They were in the living room. It was small but pleasant. Cozy. French Impressionist prints on the walls. A framed poster which advertised Cats - NOW AND FOREVER, it said. Dried flowers. A small sectional sofa, upholstered in some nubby wheat-colored fabric. A bookcase. In the bookcase he could see both of Beaumont's books on one shelf and all four of Stark's on another. Beaumont's were on a higher shelf. That was wrong, but he had to assume this bitch just didn't know any better.

He let go of her hair. 'Sit on the couch, sis. That end.' He pointed at the end of the couch next to the little end-table where the phone and the message recorder sat.

'Please,' she whispered, making no move to get up. Her mouth and cheek were beginning to swell up now, and the word came out mushy: Preesh. 'Anything. Everything. Money's in the wok.'

Moneesh inna wok..'Sit on the couch. That end.' This time he pointed the razor at her face with one hand while he

pointed at the couch ' with the other.

She scrambled onto the couch and cringed as far into the cushions as they would allow, her dark eyes very wide. She swiped at her mouth with her hand and looked unbelievingly at the blood on her palm for a moment before looking back at him.

'What do you want?' Wha ooo you wan? It was like listening to someone talk through a mouthful of food.

'I want you to make a phone call, sissy. That's all.' He picked up the telephone and used the hand holding the straight-razor long enough to thumb the ANNOUNCE button on the phone answering machine. Then he held the telephone handset out to her. It was one of the old-fashioned ones that sit in a cradle looking like a slightly melted dumbbell. Much heavier than the handset of a Princess phone. He knew it, and saw from the subtle tightening of her body when he gave it to her that she knew it, too. An edge of a smile showed on the blonde man's lips. It didn't show anyplace else; just on his lips. There was no summer in that smile.

'You're thinking you could brain me with that thing, aren't you, sis?' he asked her. 'Let me tell you something - that's not a happy thought. And you know what happens to people who lose their happy thoughts, don't you?' When she didn't answer, he said, 'They fall out of the sky. It's true. I saw it in a cartoon once. So you hold that telephone receiver in your lap and concentrate on getting your happy thoughts back.'

She stared at him, all eyes. Blood ran slowly down her chin. A drop fell off and landed on the bodice of her dress. Never get that out, sis, the blonde man thought. They say you can get it out if you rinse the spot fast in cold water, but it isn't so. They have machines. Spectroscopes. Gas chromatographs. Ultraviolet. Lady Macbeth was right.

'If that bad thought comes back, I'll see it in your eyes, sis. They're such big, dark eyes. You wouldn't want one of those big dark eyes running down your cheek, would you?'

She shook her head so fast and hard her hair flew in a storm around her face. And all the time she was shaking her head, those beautiful dark eyes never left his face, and the blonde man felt a stirring along his leg. Sir, do you have a folding ruler in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

This time the smile touched his eyes as well as his mouth, and he thought she relaxed just the tiniest bit.

'I want you to lean forward and dial Thad Beaumont's number.' She only gazed at him, her eyes bright and lustrous with shock. 'Beaumont,' he said patiently. 'The writer. Do it, sis. Time fleets ever onward like the winged feet of Mercury.'

'My book,' she said. Her mouth was now too swollen to close comfortably and it was getting harder to understand her. Eye ook, it sounded like.

'Eye ook?' he asked. 'Is that anything like a skyhook? I don't know what you're talking about. Make sense, sissy.'

Carefully, painfully, enunciating: 'My book. Book. My address book. I don't remember his number.'

The straight-razor slipped through the air toward her. It seemed to make a sound like a human whisper. That was probably just imagination, but both of them heard it, nevertheless. She shrank back even further into the wheat-colored cushions, swollen lips pulling into a grimace. He turned the razor so the blade caught the low, mellow light of the table lamp. He tipped it, let the light run along it like water, then looked at her as if they would both be crazy not to admire such a lovely thing..'Don't shit me, sis.' Now there was a soft Southern slur to his words. 'That's one thing you never want to do, not when you're dealing with a fella like me. Now dial his motherf*cking number.' She might not have Beaumont's number committed to memory, not all that much business to do there, but she would have Stark's. In the book biz, Stark was your basic movin' unit, and it just so happened the phone number was the same for both men.

Tears began to spill out of her eyes. 'I don't remember,' she moaned. I doan eemembah. The blonde man got ready to cut her - not because he was angry with her but because when you let a lady like this get away with one lie it always led to another - and then reconsidered. It was, he decided, perfectly possible that she had temporarily lost her grip on such mundane things as telephone numbers, even those of important clients like Beaumont/Stark. She was in shock. If he had asked her to dial the number of her own agency, she might well have come up just as blank. But since it was Thad Beaumont and not Rick Cowley they were talking about, he could help.