Heat of Night Read online

  “Yeah.” Big Rosa spoke suddenly. She pushed her hair from her face. She leaned forward staring into Mal’s face. “You — don’t care much for girls old as you, huh?”

  Mal flushed. Big Juan glanced over his shoulder and made a downward gesture toward Rosa. Mal saw Juan felt he was being subtle in his approach while there was nothing subtle about Rosa’s frontal attack on his morals.

  Juan got together a new smile, compounded of the agony in his eyes and the sag of his weary mouth muscles.

  He said, “I ask you a question, Mr. Hollister? How many girls you hire as you secretary? Huh? How many girls like Dolores? How many — say — in one year, huh?”

  “I don’t know, Juan. You know how it is with girls. They get married. They quit for one reason or another.”

  Juan gave him a smile that was full more of rage than of camaraderie. “Or maybe you fire them, too, huh? I mean — if they not friendly with the boss — hell, why keep them, huh? A man like you — and me — we like the girls around us to be real friendly, huh?”

  Mal couldn’t help laughing. “You, mean unless they date me — I fire ‘em?”

  Juan’s mouth pulled down in a raging leer. He tried to sound friendly and in complete empathy. “Oh, you kid. Some fun, huh? Plenty new girls. Huh?”

  He looked as if tears would break his mask of laughter.

  “No.” Mal spoke in a determined way but he may as well have been speaking against the winds roaring in from the Gulf.

  Neither Juan nor Rosa believed him. Rosa made a clicking sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  Juan tried another tack. “You kicked around a lot over on Twenty-second Street in Tampa when you was a young guy, right?” Juan’s haggard eyes still tried to smile. “Cuban girls. Over in Ybor City. Some hot chickens. Huh?”

  “I don’t know. I had to work pretty hard. I didn’t have a lot of time for fun.”

  Both Rosa and Juan digested this thought for a moment. It altered the complexion of things slightly, but not for the better.

  “This a-way it is with some men. They think when they get older — older like us three — they have missed something,” Rosa said She got up and walked to where Juan stood before Mal’s chair. Both bent from the waist, staring down at him. “They work hard when young. Pile up some money. Get to looking around for pretty young girls they missed, huh?”

  “I don’t know,” Mal said.

  “You,” Rosa said. “What’s a man like you want with a young kid like Dolores, huh?”

  “I — like Dolores.”

  “Shu. You like her. She likes you. She likes her papa, too. Her mama. We get our age — we all got to look after kids like Dolores. Huh? You think this?” Rosa’s eyes were troubled but they defied him to utter the wrong answer and he knew there was no right answer.

  Mal breathed deeply, not knowing what to say. He supposed they did not know how insulting they were, or if they vaguely suspected, they didn’t care. They loved Dolores. They wanted to protect her and were like two embattled mockingbirds pecking at the hawk that molested their nest. He told himself he was beginning to feel like a hawk. They were right, he had no right here. The simplicity of their rage was convincing. Anything so simple and honest must be right. Then he remembered his dreams about Dolores, many of them waking dreams.

  Rosa rocked her head back and forth. “A man like you. You must have had plenty women in you time, huh?” She did not wait for him to answer. “Why you waste your time with a young girl like Dolores? What you think a little girl like this knows, huh? The things a man like you wants, what would she know about them?” She made a tent with the fingers of her right hand, staring at them with contemptuous eyes. “What a child like this know for a man like you?”

  He gave up, defeated. He said, “She’s a lovely girl. That’s all I know.”

  Big Juan said, “This we know, too. It’s this lovely girl we want to keep like this. Let her marry some nice boy her own age. Eh? A man like us — like you and me, our age — what we want with such a child, huh? What a man like you and me think of a child like Dolores, eh? Not much. A little fun tonight — and then phoo. Is — this what you think?”

  Despite his best efforts, Big Juan’s voice was trembling on the brink of outrage and violence.

  Mal stood up suddenly, his movement so abrupt both Rosa and Juan stepped back, startled.

  “I don’t think anything like that,” Mal said.

  The screen door slammed and Ric stepped into the room. He glanced at them, slumped into a chair in the corner. He fiddled with the lace arm coverings. None of them looked his way.

  “Shu,” Rosa said to Mal, completely unconvinced.

  He was tired of them. He spoke sharply. “Dolores can take care of herself.”

  He heard Rosa’s sharp intake of breath. He’d made another bad mistake. There was no sense trying to batter his way into their closed minds. He just wanted to keep them quiet until he could collect Dolores and get out.

  Rosa said, “Maybe you think this that Dolores can take care of herself, sir, Meester Hollister, sir. But kindly listen to me. It is for us to take care of her. A man like you got no good in his mind when he thinks about a girl like Dolores. Why not you find a woman like you wife — you own age, huh? You find she’s a lot better for you. A woman knows what a man wants. A girl — what does she know?”

  Mal did not answer. He felt his own rage growing against them, and against himself.

  “Tell you what,” Juan said suddenly as if he’d just thought of something fine. “Why you not let Rosa tell Dolores this date is all off, huh? You and me. We got time to go down to Jake’s Bar. Have some drinks. Big laughs. We men who know our way around, huh? We not got time for keeds, huh? This is a laugh when you stop to think over it, huh? Say, you know this girl down there at Jake’s Bar. She’s a-wait tables, huh? Oh, she’s a good one for fine jokes. She’s got fine wide hips, too. She knows how to make a man laugh, how to laugh with a man. What you say?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Big Juan exhaled. This man was pushing him to the very edge of violence. Just the same, he’d tried hard to be friendly. He stared at Hollister, at Rosa, at his fists, at the night darkening his windows.

  He made a decision. He said, “Rosa, now we fix dinner, huh? We late for dinner now, huh?”

  He pushed her ahead of him into the kitchen. While Rosa worked, he watched Dolores’ bedroom door. When she came out of her room, he would solve the matter. He would tell her simply she could not go out with this man. He would say it in front of him and this would end it.

  He winced, knowing better. Unless he killed this man there was no way to end it. They had been through it all with Dolores. Over and over. You fought with Dolores, she became stubborn. She would meet this man anyhow — sneaking out to meet him. Desire is a terribly strong compulsion to drive a person to do strange things, strange even to his own nature. He knew this from his own experience. No, he could not force Dolores to do anything. Her will was too strong, she was too much like Rosa, too much like him.

  He covered his face with his hands. There had to be some other way — some way like taking Hollister far out in the Gulf and holding his head under the water for five or ten minutes.

  10

  MAL STARED AT Ric Suarez slumped in a corner chair. He could feel the hatred being generated in this room. It was so thick it could be cut with a knife.

  Mal gazed around, feeling trapped. He’d thought being left alone on the grill with Juan and Rosa was as bad a thing as could happen to him. But this — alone with this malevolent football hero was even a new low. It was the sort of situation he dreaded. He’d started out the night gay, feeling almost young, almost alive again for the first time since Stella had divorced him. But now his thoughts were darker than the Gulf, wilder, with inner rages against himself and the Venzino family.

  He checked his watch, wondering if they had Dolores chained in a room somewhere.

  He walked to the screen door, sto
od framed in it, staring at the lowering sky, the way the bay seemed flat, as if withdrawing from the fury lashing across the Gulf, spiraling in on thick wind and black clouds.

  He couldn’t endure the silence.

  “Looks like a real storm brewing,” he heard himself saying. Hell, next they’d be discussing the crops.

  “Yeah,” Ric Suarez said. He got up and paced back and forth, unable to sit still, popping fist against palm.

  There was more silence and Mal said, “Some weather.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We — haven’t had a real twister — not a bad hurricane, not in years.” He despised the sound of his own voice, why couldn’t he cut it off? “Not in years.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mal shrugged. Even a football dummy should have learned more than one word. He glanced toward the kitchen, hearing Rosa banging pots around in there, but was unable to see her. He wondered if the kids ever came in until they were forcibly dragged in to their meals?

  “Hear you dropped out of football,” Mal said after an interminable three minutes of silence. Pebbles or debris or bits of palm frond were slapped against the roof by the rising wind. Silence moved charged and dry ahead of the storm. What the hell, if Suarez hated him so badly he could not speak, why make conversation with him, talk neither of you want, about matters in which you have no interest. You owe him nothing. Why not suggest goal posts at twenty paces?

  “Yeah.”

  What a lovely evening is building up here. “Too bad,” he heard himself saying. “You really had it one time.”

  He heard Suarez snatch in his breath and realized this was too near the truth. It rankled Suarez to realize someone else considered him a has-been, even if he already believed it about himself.

  “Yeah?” This time the word was a question, inflection hard and pointed.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Ric. We’re all very proud of you here.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mal gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Me. I never could play football when I was in school. Too light. Not fast enough. If you’re light — you got to be fast.”

  “Yeah.” Ric stared at him and slapped his fist.

  “I was light. Light and slow, plodding.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mal exhaled. “You were fast. Well, it’s a big man’s game. A little man is a fool to buck it — I mean unless he loves it. I got stepped on a few times. I knew I had had it. Right then and there.”

  “Yeah.” Suarez prowled the room.

  “You probably wouldn’t think I was too light when I was a kid — I mean to look at me now.”

  “Yeah.” This didn’t mean anything.

  Mal walked out on the porch, letting the door slap behind him. The hell with Suarez. What was the sense of this, apologizing because he’d never played football? Jesus. He’d never even wanted to play football.

  The door slammed behind him and he turned thinking it was Suarez. It would relieve some of the tension in him just to take a poke at that neanderthal monster.

  “What’s the matter, Mal?” It was Dolores, in a simple print frock and a roll-collared cardigan against the rising wind. God, she was lovely.

  She took his arm, he felt relief flood through him. He could smell the elusive fragrance of her. He ached across the bridge of his nose, wanting her, loving her, needing her out of here, away from here.

  She looked up, smiling. “You want to go?” she said.

  Ho boy, he thought, the understatement of the year.

  11

  MAL HOLLISTER STOOD at the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked bluff, wind-buffeted pines and palms, the dark void of the bay and the storm approaching across the Gulf. After all his elaborate planning only one thing was certain this night: a storm brewed.

  Everything had gone wrong.

  He heard the music; its stereophonic sounds hammered at him from every direction: a mockery of his own devising and selecting — something by Mantovani. He’d always enjoyed Mantovani. Well, he was wrong about everything. He should have cleared out of this place before he became so deeply involved. For sure, he was closing this whole damned house, he was selling it off as he should have done after Stella divorced him. This place was hers, and had been evil for him from the first.

  “Mal.” Dolores’ voice reached out and caressed him like sharp kitten claws from the divan. “Come here, Mal.”

  He sighed, and nodded.

  “As soon as I close the drapes. This damned lightning snaps off right in my eyeballs.” He tried to smile. “Reminds me of your mother.”

  Dolores’ voice remained soft and urgent. “If she knew how much I loved you, she would love you.”

  He shook his head. “If she even knew you were here, she’d kill me. With her bare hands.”

  He turned, looking at her stretched out on the divan, blonde hair against the pillows, dress high above her golden knees. He felt a sharp twist in his loins and cursed himself.

  He pulled his gaze away to the intimate dining table for two and stared at the remains of the supper. True, he hadn’t eaten much but Dolores had devoured almost every edible on the table. How this girl loved black olives. She’d eaten his filet mignon, too: no sense wasting it if he was sure he wasn’t going to eat it. His anxiety had killed his appetite and she ate like a young horse, a young child. A young girl.

  His gaze touched the chilled wine bottle he hadn’t opened, the cocktail shaker he’d ignored since the moment he brought Dolores into this room. It was as though Rosa and Juan stood all evening in the shadows, daring him: open it, you evil man, get her to drink, intoxicated, a child and you would do this.

  He closed his eyes, still standing beside the windows and the romantic view that was lost in the storm’s unearthly dark. He saw the way he’d planned it, music, wine, the way they’d lie together on the divan, the way he would carry her naked and moaning to his bedroom. This was bad enough but worse was the desire and excitement in her eyes: she wanted all this, even more than he did. He would have to be blind to miss it. He wasn’t blind. Knowing she wanted to give herself to him stopped him cold, showed him clearly he had no right.

  He caught the drape cord, glancing once more at the storm-riven night. Well, there was no moon, either. Nothing was as he’d planned. Abrupt lightning clicked at the tip of his nose. When he could see again, he stared into the cosmic darkness and muttered bitterly, “The hell with you, too.”

  He yanked the drapes closed.

  He stood with his back to the drapes hearing the storm outside the windows and the one raging within him.

  He looked at her, saw he could have her, anything he wanted, everything, she was waiting. He must take her or she could not endure the need. Her untouched body had been an obsession with her, Rosa’s most vital teaching from infancy, but she wanted to forget it now because he was more important to her.

  She was a devout and innocent girl — innocent in the wonderful way only a Venzino offspring could be innocent — aware of life but innocent of guile and evil. She’d grown up believing her virginity was the greatest gift she could bring the one man she would love; not even chastity was an acceptable substitute. The ecstasy her simple and revered parents shared was what she wanted with the man she married and she’d come here to him tonight, untouched. She was a virgin, for God’s sake, in this age and time when such a condition no longer mattered to the sophisticated, except as a jest. But she wasn’t sophisticated and she believed in the gift of herself to the man God made for her — it must be for her as it had been for Juan and Rosa.

  All this he saw — like something haunting him — everytime he looked at her. It was part of her, like the vulnerable softness in her deep dark eyes.

  He walked slowly toward her, faintly astonished at how cozy the room had become, breathlessly warmed and charged with something that had nothing to do with the encroaching storm.

  Then he saw she’d kicked off her shoes and was wriggling her bare toes in the luxurious pillows like a c
hild in sand. If only her frock were less simple. If only there were the faintest hint of guile about her. If only he hadn’t brought her here in the first place.

  One thing sure, the whole place, on the market, the first thing in the morning. He’d sell the place, clear out. He’d leave this child — this virgin — alone. But he was only human, worse, he was human as hell. To leave her alone he’d have to get out of here. All right.

  She stretched out her bare arms, extending her moving fingers to reach for him. This was almost as he’d dreamed it, only there’d been no little-girl frock to remind him he was divorced, twice her age.

  The music changed now, muted, soft, a love song. He felt an ache at the nape of his neck. He wanted a drink. He wanted a fifth, straight.

  He stood in front of her. He felt the pounding of his heart, his terrible need for her. He longed to fall beside her, gather her in his arms, bury his face in her gold hair, greedily, wildly. He did not move.

  “Mal?”

  “Yes?”

  “You sound angry.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “You — you’re disappointed.”

  “Me? Disappointed about what?”

  She sat forward, staring up at him, smooth face troubled. “I don’t know. Perhaps there is something I should know, something I should do. You’re disappointed.”

  “God no. I’m glad you’re with me.”

  “Yes. But you’re dismayed. Because I’m dumb.”

  “Dumb?”

  She nodded, contrite. “Yes. I ate like a foolish puppy. I chattered like a little fool. Only because I was so wildly happy. Only because something like this is what you dream — it never really comes true.”

  “It was the way I wanted you to feel. I wanted you to be happy, so there would be no memory even of any other happiness. So this would be the finest — ”

  “Oh, it is, Mal. That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to be stupid and spoil it.”

  “You’re not stupid. You’re only young.”

  She reached up her arms again. “Help me, Mal. Please. Tell me. I’m not really dumb. Tell me what you want — and I’ll do it, anything.”