The Vengeful Virgin (Hard Case Crime) Read online

  Raves For the Work of GIL BREWER!

  “[One] of the most adroit plot-spinners of the paperback era.”

  —Geoffrey O’Brien, Hardboiled America

  “Gil Brewer has spent a long time in the shadows of his more famous contemporaries, but his best work—a noir blend of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett and Ernest Hemingway—gives his rivals a run for their money. I’m delighted to see him making a comeback.”

  —Allan Guthrie

  “There is a Woolrichian darkness and desperation in his best work. It stays with you a long, long time.”

  —Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins, A Century of Noir

  “The prose is lean [yet] rich with raw emotion genuinely portrayed and felt.”

  —Bill Pronzini

  “A short but full-packed story, pointed and restrained...an effective tale of an ordinary man trying to turn sharpie and destroying himself in the process.”

  —Anthony Boucher, The New York Times

  “One of the most respected (and collected) of the Gold Medal writers.”

  —Murder Mystery Monthlies

  “His style is simple and direct, with sharp dialogue and considerable passion and intensity; at times it takes on an almost Hemingwayesque flavor.”

  —St. James Guide To Crime & Mystery Writers

  “Skillfully conveys the despair of a man with a lifelong dream after he succumbs to the temptation provided by a...fortune.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “One of the leading writers of paperback originals.”

  —Contemporary American Authors

  “At his best, he hooked you in his first paragraph and never let you go.”

  —Ed Gorman

  She pouted. “Please. I’d like a fire.”

  She had the blankets spread all around the floor in front of the fireplace. I dumped the wood in a box, and set the fire with some old newspapers underneath the wood. It caught quickly, and the room became a chimera of fire and shadow.

  When I turned around, she was naked, lying there on the blankets.

  “Get the money, Jack.”

  I didn’t say anything. I got the money bag and brought it back.

  “Pour it out,” she said. “Here.” She slapped the blanket between us.

  I opened the bag and turned it upside down. The money fell there on the blanket between us, piling up and piling up. I threw the small suitcase across the room, and knelt looking at it.

  “It kind of makes you crazy,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Undress,” she said. “Like me. Take your shirt off.”

  The firelight was high now, and the flames danced across the ceiling and played like thin wicked fingers across the pile of money.

  “Jesus, Jack—just look at it, will you?”

  I felt a little crazy, right then. I couldn’t help it.

  Shirley knelt by the money. She reached into it with both fists and tossed it into the air, and watched it flutter down. I lay there, watching her. She was beautiful, Christ, they didn’t come any more beautiful than Shirley Angela. Kneeling there with that big pile of money, and the firelight playing across her body, breasts, hip and thigh, her flesh sheened a little with perspiration from the heat so it mirrored the flames—there was never anything like it...

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

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  FADE TO BLONDE by Max Phillips

  TOP OF THE HEAP by Erle Stanley Gardner

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  TWO FOR THE MONEY by Max Allan Collins

  THE CONFESSION by Domenic Stansberry

  HOME IS THE SAILOR by Day Keene

  KISS HER GOODBYE by Allan Guthrie

  361 by Donald E. Westlake

  PLUNDER OF THE SUN by David Dodge

  BRANDED WOMAN by Wade Miller

  DUTCH UNCLE by Peter Pavia

  THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART by Lawrence Block

  THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE by Ed McBain

  NIGHT WALKER by Donald Hamilton

  A TOUCH OF DEATH by Charles Williams

  SAY IT WITH BULLETS by Richard Powell

  WITNESS TO MYSELF by Seymour Shubin

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  LEMONS NEVER LIE by Richard Stark

  THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  THE GUNS OF HEAVEN by Pete Hamill

  THE LAST MATCH by David Dodge

  GRAVE DESCEND by John Lange

  THE PEDDLER by Richard S. Prather

  LUCKY AT CARDS by Lawrence Block

  ROBBIE’S WIFE by Russell Hill

  The Vengeful VIRGIN

  by Gil Brewer

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-030)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: April 2007

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London

  SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 1958 by Gil Brewer

  Cover painting copyright © 2006 by Gregory Manchess

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-374-8

  E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-387-8

  Cover design by Cooley Design Lab

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapte Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  One

  She wasn’t what you would call beautiful. She was just a red-haired girl with a lot of sock. She stood behind the screen door on the front porch, frowning at me.

  “I’m Jack Ruxton,” I said. “From Ruxton’s TV. Sorry I’m late.”

  “That’s all right.”

  She was maybe seventeen or eighteen. The porch light was on. It was about eight o’clock on a Monday night. Looking past her, I could see through a long, broad living room, expensively furnished, and on into a brightly lighted bedroom. A man with iron-gray hair lay on a hospital bed under a sheet, with his toes sticking straight up. His head was flung back as if he were in a cramp. There was a lot of tricky-lookin
g paraphernalia, rubber hoses and tanks and stuff, beside the bed. A fluorescent bedlight glared across his face. It was eerie.

  “Well,” I said. “TV on the blink?”

  “No. That’s not what I called you for, Mr. Ruxton.”

  She caught on that it was uncomfortable with the screen door between us, gave it a shove with her knee. I backed away on the porch. She stepped out and closed the door.

  “I’m Shirley Angela,” she said.

  I nodded. She had on a red knitted thing, made of one piece. It was shorts and a top, without sleeves. The top was what I think they call a boat-neck, tight up against her throat. The whole thing was very tight on her. Her face seemed almost childlike, but she was no child.

  She said, “Let’s go out back and talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s sleeping. He only sleeps a few minutes. It might wake him if we went in now.”

  “Okay.”

  She brushed past me and walked down the sloping cement ramp built from the top of the porch to the front walk. There were no steps. The ramp was for wheelchair cases. I followed her.

  The hair was shoulder length, and more auburn, close up. Her waist was extremely narrow. She walked on the balls of her feet, throwing her hips out in back. It was there to be looked at, and she must have known it.

  “Out here, Mr. Ruxton.”

  I grunted, and we came around the side of the house on a path of stepping stones. She could really do things on stepping stones. She flipped a switch on a pine tree, and floodlights came on out in the yard. We walked along that way, playing Indian, to where the path ended. She paused, but didn’t turn, and said, “There are just the two of us living here. I have to take care of everything.” Then she moved off again.

  I didn’t say anything.

  The lot was a big one, maybe two hundred by three hundred. It was wooded with Australian pine, a couple of big old water oaks, and royal palms. You could see soft lights in a house beyond a hedge next door. There was a sea wall down there by the Gulf, and the moon and floodlights gleamed on the water. Three weathered lawn chairs stood around a rusting steel-topped table that had once been white.

  “We can sit out here.”

  “Okay.”

  We moved the chairs away from the table and sat.

  I didn’t know what we were waiting for, but neither of us said anything for a minute or two. You knew she was young, yet there was something contained about her. She was almost serene. Her skin was pale, almost pure white. Her face was smooth and oval, but with high cheekbones under the velvety skin. Looking at her, you knew it would be something to lay your hands on that soft white skin; very smooth, like a breast, all over.

  The thought did occur to me: What the hell is she doing here alone with that old guy in the bed? And somehow I knew it wasn’t any money problem. That’s all I thought, though. I decided to let her carry the ball, and quit thinking how good she looked. Grace had looked good, too, and now she had me half nuts, the way she was acting. We had had it good and then lost it, and now she wouldn’t let me alone and I couldn’t shake her. It made me half sick every time I thought of Grace. I didn’t know what the hell to do about her.

  “Florida’s sure nice, nights like this,” I said. “That’s a fine breeze. Smell the salt?”

  “Mr. Ruxton. It’s really going to entail a lot of work—what I want done.”

  Her voice was much like her face. It seemed kind of flat and childish at first, until the overtones hit you. She leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “We have only one television set, a small one. One of these cheap seventeen-inch portable models. It’s just no darned good, what with those dog ears they use.”

  “Rabbit ears,” I said. “If the set’s any good, you should have decent reception. Of course, out here on the beaches, you might have some interference. I’ll check into that.”

  “Yes. But what we want are two large sets. Color. One for the living room, and then I want one suspended over his bed, so he can watch it in bed, you see?”

  “Hm-m-mmm.”

  “He’s able to get up, of course, when he feels well. But mostly he’s in bed, lately. It would be best to hang it right over his head. So he could see it easily.”

  She leaned back and folded her hands in her lap.

  “We’d pay cash, of course,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Wasn’t worrying.”

  She smiled briefly.

  “Think I can handle everything you want, Miss Angela.”

  “And, also—a good antenna.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s not all. I want one of these intercom businesses set up, too. Between all of the rooms. So he can call me whenever he needs me. Sometimes he needs me in a hurry. His voice isn’t too strong.”

  “We can take care of that.”

  “I have no idea which brand is best. I used to read these consumers’ reports, but I don’t keep up anymore. Naturally, Victor—Mr. Spondell, that is—doesn’t care, so long as everything works perfectly. He’s particular about buying the very best, though.”

  “I understand.”

  She was a puzzler. I knew she was in her teens, yet she had that direct and deadly poise of a woman beyond her years.

  I was figuring Miss Shirley Angela was going to help my business in her own small way. This looked like a good deal. You’ve got to whittle every stick you get your hands on, if you expect to be big. Your business has to be the biggest and the best, if you expect it to pay off. That’s how it was going to be with me. There was the new annex, and two new trucks, and two new men. I was plenty in debt. But if you’re smart enough to find all the angles and ride them down, you won’t drown. In the beginning, you’ve got to scramble, and you’ve got to ride those angles hard, every damned one of them. You don’t let any of them throw you, not even the measliest, because every buck adds up. Either that, or you make it big and fast some way, and quit cold. I had learned the hard way, misfiring across a lot of lousy years, that I would have to slug for it—slug everybody in sight. So I was glad I’d come out here myself, instead of sending one of the men from the shop. It had been mostly by chance, and because Grace was hanging around again outside the store.

  I decided to hold off the pitch till after we were inside the house. From the way it looked, the guy in there wouldn’t be any hindrance.

  Things seemed a little strained, though, and I wasn’t sure why. I kept wondering what her relationship was to the guy in there.

  “We can go in now,” she said. “He’ll be awake.”

  We walked back the way we had come and went into the house. As we entered the living room she said, “I’ll let you decide the best place for everything, Mr. Ruxton. You’ll know best, I’m sure.”

  We left his room until last. She was avoiding it, and trying every way she knew to make it look as if she wasn’t avoiding it. I wanted to get a good look at him, and that room. Her acting the way she did only made it worse. The room was like a magnet.

  It was a fairly large house: large living room, three bedrooms, dinette, kitchen, three bathrooms, and a sprawling glassed-in area they call a Florida room down here. It was so quiet you could hear him clear his throat, or change position on the bed.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off her legs and she knew it. We were in the kitchen when she excused herself and came back in a minute buttoning up a yellow housecoat.

  “What do you think, Mr. Ruxton?”

  “Well, there’ll be a few minor difficulties in the wiring, but we’ll iron them out. Maybe I’d better have a look in there, now.”

  She turned quickly away. “All right.” We went into his bedroom.

  “Victor?”

  He opened his eyes and stared at me.

  “Victor, this is Mr. Ruxton. He’s come to put in the TV sets and everything. Like we talked about. He wants to check your room.”

  He blinked, just once, staring at me. Those blue eyes were really sharp. Somehow they reminded me of an
eagle’s I’d seen in a Belgian zoo. It was as if he stared at the wall right through your head.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

  His voice wasn’t strong. He had finely drawn features, a long nose, and heavy brows knotted with snarled gray hair. There was a quality of stubborn arrogance in his glance, of tired determination. The hair on his head was iron-gray, and like barbed wire. He looked as if he were grinning, but it was only the shape of his mouth when relaxed. He wore light gray pajamas. The sheet was neatly drawn and folded across his chest, his hands folded on the sheet. He was a shell, but looked as if he’d once been as strong as an ox.

  The sound of his normal breathing was bad. Something like a horse with an advanced case of the heaves.

  “Ruxton, eh?” he said, breathing like wind in an October corn field. “The only Ruxton I believe I ever had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with was an unmitigated ass and a dirty son of a bitch. You any relation to him?”

  I watched the hands shake; big, once-powerful hands, folded on the sheet.

  “Probably,” I said.

  Some gut-wrung breathless sounds burst past his lips. He was laughing. I knew then I wasn’t going to make any pitch to her for anything. I would do my job and get out of here. I didn’t like the guy.

  “Victor,” she said, moving quickly to the side of the bed. “Please, take it easy, will you?”

  “Oh, Christ,” he said. He spoke with soft pain. She glanced at me, her eyes up-flung in a show of resignation, and began straightening his pillows.

  There were oxygen tanks beside the bed, standing upright in a nickel-steel rack with wheels and handles. A long black coil-rubber hose and mask dangled over one side of the gleaming handles like an eyeless phython with its mouth open.

  The room was antiseptically clean, neat and white. Not even a magazine or a chair. Just the hospitaltype bed and the oxygen tanks. To the left a whitecurtained window opened on the side of the house, over the path that led out back. Another window was at the head of the bed. Hanging on a bedpost by a black ribbon was a small, filigreed silver bell; the kind that used to sit on the back of the buffet at your grandmother’s house in the long ago of your early childhood.