The Deadly Arts by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller

Author:Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller [Pronzini, Bill & Muller, Marcia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 087795688X
Publisher: Arbor House
Published: 1985-08-27T21:00:00+00:00

Rainey ran after him and caught up with him a block from the Hall. “Don’t do it,” he pleaded. “Hear me now. I’m an old man and I know I ain’t worth nothin’ to nobody, but I’m begging you, boy, please, please, please don’t do it. I ain’t never axed you for nothing in my whole life, but I’m axing you for this: Please, don’t do it.”

“I got to,” Dix said quietly. “It ain’t that I want to; I got to.”

“But why, boy? Why?”

“Because we made a promise to each other,” Dix said. “That night in that Texas motel room, the man Madge was with had told her he was going to marry her. He’d been telling her that for a long time. But he was already married and kept putting off leaving his wife. Finally Madge had enough of it. She asked me to come to her room between sets. I knew she was doing it to make him jealous, but it didn’t matter none to me. I’d been crazy about her for so long that I’d do anything she asked me to, and she knew it.

“So between sets I slipped across the highway to where she had her room. But he was already there. I could hear through the transom that he was roughing her up some, but the door was locked and I couldn’t get in. Then I heard a shot and everything got quiet. A minute later Madge opened the door and let me in. The man was laying across the bed dying. Madge started bawling and saying how they would put her in the pen and how she wouldn’t be able to stand it, she’d go crazy and kill herself.

“It was then I asked her if she’d wait for me if I took the blame for her. She promised she would. And I promised her I’d come back to her.” Dix sighed quietly. “That’s what I’m doing, Rainey—keeping my promise.”

“And what going to happen if she ain’t kept hers?” Rainey asked.

“Mama Rulat asked me the same thing this afternoon when I asked her where Madge was at.” Mama Rulat was an octaroon fortuneteller who always knew where everyone in the Quarter lived.

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her I’d do what I had to do. That’s all a man can do, Rainey.”

Dix walked away, up a dark side street. Rainey, watching him go, shook his head in the anguish of the aged and helpless. “Lord, Lord, Lord.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.