Free New Title 1 by Ed Gorman Page B

just kind've stroll real casual-like onto the lot, and I get in this red Plymouth convertible—I figure I may as well steal a car that's got some style—and I slide behind the wheel and I hot-wire the sonofabitch right across the street from the cops, and then I pull off the lot. And they don't do anything—not a goddamned thing—till it's way too late! I took that baby for a joyride and then ditched it. They never caught me!"
    A guy can't keep hearing and hearing about how smart and cool and gifted his cellmate is without feeling a little bit competitive.
    Isn't he also smart and cool and gifted?
    Hasn't he himself pulled off a couple of stunts that would make his cellmate's pale by comparison?
    So, knowing that his cellmate will never believe his tale, putting it down to standard jailhouse fantasy, he decides to tell his cellmate about one night outside Miami, Florida.

    The speedboat he's using overturns—he's probably had a little too much vino to manipulate such a craft in the stormy waters, a downpour having started an hour earlier—and damned if he doesn't wash up like a castaway in an old silent movie.
    Now what?
    Starts walking. All he's wearing is a pair of swimming trunks. Even left his Rolex behind.
    Walks through the night and the rain for half an hour before he sees this little cabin down in a wash of white sand, meager little light showing.
    Walks down there. Knocks.
    Lady answers. Forty-fiveish. Bit overweight. But dressed in a bikini and an open man's shirt, she has a voluptuous quality that is undeniably sexy.
    Tells her his dilemma, she invites him in.
    Which is when he meets the husband, chunky guy with balding gray dome and so much gray hair on his barrel chest that he looks like he's training to become a bear. Unfriendly as hell. Can tell right away this is one very possessive guy. Doesn't appreciate your eyes on his wife's breasts. No, sir.
    They're drinking some kind of A&P generic beer and are actually pretty wasted on it. And listening to some Cuban station. Now that he gets a longer look at her, she looks a little Cuban as a matter of fact. As for the guy, what he has on the wall is a bunch of Hemingway kitsch, this stuffed marlin that he probably didn't catch personally and this big color photo of himself in battle gear in what looks to be Vietnam.
    Far as he can see, the place has three rooms and a bath. She suggests that he can sleep on the floor with some blankets she'll give him, then in the morning her husband can give him a ride into town. Husband doesn't look all that happy about it. Keeps glowering at him.
    They drink until two, and by then he knows what he's going to do.
    Really crazy idea. Dangerous idea. Absurd idea.
    But of course he's going to do it anyway.
    He's worked up so much hate for her swaggering abusive macho husband—the kind of guy he really loathes, kind of guy who was always picking on him when he was growing up—that he knows he'll go through with it.
    He gets up and pretends he's going to go to the bathroom, carrying his beer bottle to set in a cardboard box along with the empties.
    But when he gets even with the husband, he turns suddenly, hits the bastard on the head, grabs a length of clothesline he's been eyeing for the past hour, and then ties the husband in his chair. Then he grabs the wife and slams her against the wall and asks where her old man keeps his guns. She tells him. He finds a .38, loaded.
    All the wife does is scream and scream and scream. So shocked she can't get herself together enough to help her husband at all. Blood is running down the side of his head, in a stream down his cheek
    Then he goes for the wife.
    Rips her shirt off and then her swimsuit and then throws her down on the table and spreads her legs.
    He doesn't rape her till he's sure the husband is conscious and watching.
    The guy, by this time, is all screamed out. He's called him every possible name, made every possible threat. And now he's hoarse. Literally, hoarse.
    The woman