Free Case of Lucy Bending by Lawrence Sanders Page A

pushed back. The caterer's men packed up their chairs and equipment, and departed. The accordionist went to his well-deserved rest.
Bill Holloway brought out two portable speakers connected by long cords to the hi-fi equipment in his library. He put on a tape of disco music, and some of the younger couples and children began to dance on the pool deck and on the band of lawn surrounding it.
Turk Bending sought out the hostess.
"Good dinner," he said. "I ate myself sick."
"And now you want that joint," Jane Holloway said.
"No, no," he said, lowering his voice, leaning close to her. "That's what I wanted to tell you: I don't need the joint. Tom Janssen brought some coke."
She brightened. "Good stuff?"
"He says so. He's got it in his car. The white Jaguar. Want a snort?"
"Sounds good to me."
"We don't want to go there in a gang. Just sort of wander over, one by one, casual-like."
"Who's snorting?"
"You, me, Tom, Luther Empt, and Tom's creamer."
"The kid in the red diaper suit?"
"That's the one."
"Tom better tell her she needs a shave."
"Maybe he's figuring on chewing it off," Bending said, grinning wolfishly.
So Jane Holloway didn't go up to her bedroom for a stick of marijuana. Which was fortunate, because if she had, she would have caught her son Edward rifling her bureau drawer.
Eddie had signaled Wayne Bending by jerking his head toward the Empt home. Wayne had nodded and drifted off into the darkness. He left it to Lucy or his mother to get Harry home. The kid had eaten so much he was sleeping sitting up in a chair, gripping his favorite pocket calculator. Wayne figured he'd be all right if he didn't topple over.
He moved slowly out of the lantern light glimmering on the surface of the pool. Then he began trotting. He came to the highway and jogged along the verge of A1A until he came to the white gravel driveway leading to Luther Empt's home.
The entrance was guarded by two big gates of wrought iron, but they were never locked. Wayne slipped through, closing the gate behind him. He stayed in the shadows of royal poinciana and tulip trees as he made his way onto the grounds. Dimly, muted, he could hear the music from the Holloways' pool party. By now, he thought sourly, the grownups would be getting bombed and feeling up their friends' wives. Someone fully dressed would fall, or be pushed, into the pool, and everyone would laugh hysterically. It was sickening.
Wayne was a stocky, squarish boy with a long torso and short legs. His shoulders were bunchy, his neck thick. He wasn't much to look at, he knew, but he could throw a football farther than any of his friends, and only Eddie Holloway could beat him at arm wrestling.
    Sometimes he wondered if he really was his father's son. He obviously didn't have his father's good looks, and it seemed doubtful if he'd ever have his height. Also, his father was fair-haired, cheerful, and made out with women like a bandit. Wayne was dark and dour, and girls never gave him a second glance.
    He found the place he was looking for: a spidery wood latticed gazebo Teresa Empt had erected on her well-manicured lawn near a fine stand of pink, yellow, and white frangipani. The gazebo was octagonal, topped with an open-worked cupola. Inside were two chairs and two loveseats of iron cast in a Victorian grape-and-vine pattern, painted white.
    The gazebo was rarely used by the Empts, unless newspaper or magazine photographers were expected. But Eddie Holloway and Wayne Bending used it, to smoke pot, drink a beer, or just talk. One of these nights, Eddie kept saying, they would bring a couple of cunts there and make out like mad.
    The cast-iron chairs and loveseats might have been decorative but without cushions they were hell to sit on. Wayne Bending squatted on the hard-packed sand floor, facing the Empt house. There was a dim light on downstairs, but he supposed everyone was still at the Hollo ways' party.
    He sat there in the sand, hunched over and brooding. Wayne Bending, at the age of twelve, had