Judas Journey. Lee Roberts
glass and took a long swallow.
“Shotgun wedding?” he asked mockingly.
She gazed at him over the rim of the glass. “We’d been to a party. There was a lot to drink, too much.” She turned partially away and drew on her cigarette. “It was just one of those things—all part of a merry evening. We chartered a plane to Mexico, a party of us, and—Jeff and I were married. A gay lark, I thought—until afterward. Then I was sorry, of course, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Jeff’s a lawyer, you know, and he played it smart—maneuvered the whole thing. I know now that he had it all planned . . .” She turned to face him and her lips twisted. “I was his legal wife, and that’s all Jeff wanted.”
“I see,” Ramsey said. “So you were stuck with Jeff and bored with him, and you began to chase around with Blake Bowen.”
“Why shouldn’t I? You were down in the jungles of Mexico on a silly wild goose chase for mahogany, and Jeff—well, I’d rather not discuss Jeff. And Blake was kind to me, in his way, and—you shouldn’t have left me, Rack, not for so long. You know how I am.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “Everything is wonderful. While I’m gone you marry a cold-blooded lawyer, and have an affair with a cheap night club owner, and God knows what else. What am I supposed to do? Kiss and make up to a married woman?”
“Listen, Rack—I’m going to divorce Jeff, no matter what it costs me. I want you to know that.”
“And marry me?”
“If you still want me.”
“Jeff will fight the divorce.”
“Of course, but I’ll win. . . . Do you still love me, Rack.’”
“Yes,” he said, thinking that in spite of everything he really meant it.
Her eyes became tender and the soft light made shadows on her cheeks and glinted with a moist redness on her full lips. She was beautiful, he thought, very desirable, even though she had lived fast, according to her whims of the moment, with never a thought of the morning or of what lurked beyond the next hour. That was the way she was made, and it was money that had ruined her, the money her father had left her. It had made her what she was, and maybe he could even understand why she had married Jefferson Carr. It was the kind of thing she would do—and then regret in the cold bleak dawn. And he knew that he still wanted her, in spite of everything. It would be stupid of him not to want her—and her millions.
“I need you, Rack,” she whispered. “You need me.” She placed her glass on the table, crushed out her cigarette. Then she stood erect, her hands at her side, the palms turned outward in invitation, and there was a melting softness in her eyes and around her lips, an almost virginal shyness. Her body moved beneath the robe and she gave him a small tremulous smile.
It was a smile that Ramsey would never forget.
As he moved toward her, the room rocked with a blinding explosion. For a vivid instant the windows gleamed red with a flash of fire. Marcia Carr’s head jerked backward, like a puppet on a string, and a small black hole appeared beneath her right eye. She stood rigidly, a final bright gleam of life in her eyes, and then her face crumpled, and her body too, and her eyes went dull and dead. She fell backward to the floor, her limp body making a soft thudding sound on the thick rug.
Ramsey stared stupidly, his voice trapped in his throat. The shock of what he saw was too great; his mind refused to accept it. He heard a furtive scurrying sound behind him and as he turned slowly and dumbly a hard object slammed viciously against the side of his head, jarring him to his heels. He swayed gently, wild lights dancing in his brain, and his eyes suddenly refused to focus. His knees went limp and the floor slanted upward and through a final shimmering haze he saw the body of Marcia on the floor, the sheer folds of the blue robe spread like a silken fan beneath her.
In an odd blurred way, before the complete blackness closed in, his brain turned slowly backward, back to October . . .
CHAPTER 2
IN OCTOBER Ramsey and Pete Davos quit their jobs in a Pennsylvania coal mine and drifted west to the oil fields of the Texas gulf coast. Ramsey went to work as a rigger and Pete landed a job as a driller’s helper. They took a room at the Gulf Hotel, a small clean establishment close to the waterfront, and started work on a Monday morning. Monday evening they were drinking beer in a small night club not far from the hotel. It was called the Jungle Tavern. The decorations consisted of fake palm trees, bamboo furniture and south sea murals. The waiters wore white mess jackets and the cigarette girls swished about in brief grass skirts and little else.
It was in the Jungle Tavern that Ramsey met Sara Colvin.
She glided out onto the floor under a blue spotlight and began to sway to the savage beat of drums. Her long black hair hung over her naked shoulders and her costume consisted of a feathered headdress and a scanty two-piece arrangement of bright beads. For ten minutes her small white body writhed slowly in a dance that had been old at the time of the Aztecs. When it was over, she ran lightly from the floor. The lights came on and the six-piece orchestra began to play a rumba. The small dance floor filled with couples.
Thinking of the dancer, Ramsey said, “That’s for me.” He was a big man, with blond hair cropped short and a jutting ledge of brow over deep-set gray eyes. His face was still pale from the coal mine and his nose was slightly crooked, the result of a bar room brawl in Akron, Ohio. Beneath a gray tweed jacket his shoulders were thick and wide.
Pete Davos grinned across the table at him. “See if she’s got a girl friend, Rack.” Light glinted on Pete’s heavy dark features and short curly black hair. The two men had met in the army, and after their discharge they had stuck together, drifting, following the sun, working on construction jobs, in steel mills and coal mines, in factories, wherever they could find work where they happened to be. Ramsey had been a derrick rigger before his enlistment, and this had prompted their trip to Texas. Perhaps in a month they would be in California or Florida. It didn’t matter to them. They were rootless, with no particular ambitions and no interest in political, moral or civic matters. Both were single, with no family, ties, except Pete Davos, who had a married sister in Saginaw. Ramsey was thirty-two years old: Pete was two years younger.
Ramsey beckoned to a hovering waiter. “What’s her name? The dancer?”
“Sara Colvin, sir.”
“Miss Colvin?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“Miss or Missus,” Pete muttered. “Since when did you care?”
Ramsey ignored him, borrowed a pencil from the waiter and wrote on a corner of a menu: I enjoyed your dance. May I buy you a drink? Please? Rackwell Ramsey. He grinned up at the waiter, handed him the menu and a dollar. “Will you please give this to her—and bring us two more beers?”
The waiter nodded, his face impassive, and moved away.
Pete said eagerly, “Did you mention a girl for me?”
“I will,” Ramsey said. “Everything in proper order.”
One hour and three beers later it was midnight. Sara Colvin danced again, this time in an off-shoulder peasant blouse and a swirling red skirt. Once she looked directly at Ramsey. He grinned and lifted a hand. She glanced quickly away and did not look toward him again. Her hair was now coiled in two thick braids around her small delicately shaped head. Ramsey saw that her eyes were brown and tilted slightly at the outer corners. Part Mex, he thought, or maybe Chinese, and a slow excitement stirred within him.
When the dance was over, she smiled, half shyly, blew a kiss at the crowd, and was gone with a flash of slim white legs beneath the red skirt.
Ramsey finished his beer, put some money on the table and stood up. “Come on,” he said to Pete. Out on the sidewalk Ramsey hesitated and then said to Pete. “I’ll go around in back. You wait here—so we don’t miss her.”
“All