An Eye for an Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

his jacket pocket and drank from it. The whiskey burned in his mouth and down his throat. He caught a deep breath and wiped his mouth and put the bottle out of sight under the front seat. Then he opened the double doors and hooked them back and went jolting away down the rutted alley. It was nineteen minutes after twelve.
    From South Flat, where the house was, he had to drive clear across town to reach Lister Road. The mood of exhilaration he was in stayed with him, but it changed, becoming darker and harder as the sense of forward movement gripped him. He had wasted too much time. Now he wasn’t going to waste any more. Now things were going to be settled once and for all.
    All the way over he could see Lorene in the back of his mind. It was funny, how that was. In front of him he could see the street and the traffic lights, the people crossing at the intersections. And at the same time he could see Lorene so clear and plain that even the little soft reddy-gold hairs on her forearms showed. It made him crazy to see her like that. It made him stamp his feet and twist his head, unable to sit still while he waited for the damned red lights. It made him not want to wait for them. He hated anybody telling him what to do, making him stop when he wanted to go and go fast. Slobs, he thought, looking at the people blocking the street while he sat. Goddamn slobs, what have they got to do that’s so important?
    Nothing. Nothing like what I’ve got to do.
    He passed Courthouse Square on the south side, so that the building was interposed between him and the office of Ben Forbes. But he looked that way and smiled, a smile of incalculable malice.
    You’re the smart boy, he thought. All right, let’s see if your stinking little lawbooks have the answer to this one.
    And you, Lorene. You wait around. I’ll hold you by your pretty red hair and make you wish you’d never been born.
    You’ve got it coming.
    And so has he. I’ll make him sweat. By God, I’ll make him sweat.
    Lister Road was quiet. It was a snotty-looking road. There were thirty-five-mile speed-limit signs all the way along to keep the peasants from going through too fast. That was the kind of a thing that always made him want to do seventy just to show them. But he held it down. This was one time he didn’t want anybody to notice him.
    He had been up and down the road before at different odd times. It had pleased him to drive past the houses he was interested in, spying on them, learning all he wanted to know, and the people inside never guessing it. He passed the house that had Pettit on the mailbox and looked into the garage as he went by. You could see it easy from the road. They had two cars and both of them were gone. Rich bitches. So that was all right.
    The next house was the house. Ben Forbes’ house.
    Something happened that Al hadn’t been looking for. He got such a rush of blood to the head that he was almost blind. God damn it, he thought. God damn it, I ain’t going to fool around, I’m going to kill ’em. Kill every damn one of ’em. That’s what they need, after what they’ve done to me. Blow their goddamn guts out.
    The car slewed onto the berm, throwing gravel.
    The noise startled him. For a minute it sounded like shots hitting the fenders. He set his teeth and wrenched the wheel. The car straightened out. He could see the road again. He could see Lorene, too, the way she had looked that time when she told him he couldn’t ever come near her again. “Never again,” she said, “you hear that? Never.” Screaming at him. Snotty as hell. Swelled up like a toad with her own importance.
    That’s what he taught her, that bastard Forbes.
    Al’s head was pounding. He needed a drink. He had needed one bad before but never like this. He thought he would die if he didn’t get one. He drove along the road, and when he came to a place where there were no houses on either side he slowed down and fished the bottle from under the seat and gulped at it