Blood Money by Thomas Perry Page A

make you happy. Once you’ve seen something, you’re stuck with it. If I think about it, I can see her now. She isn’t any different from the way she looked then. Where every long black hair was, every pore of that smooth white skin, whatever was reflected in those huge brown eyes at different times; even things I didn’t notice at that moment—things in the room. There was a lace cover on the counter behind me, and the corner was folded up, just like this.” He folded the edge of Jane’s sheet todemonstrate. “There was a sand fly that was on its way to the window to get out.”
    Jane’s throat was dry. She cleared it, and said, “It must be hard.”
    “Not in the same way as it used to be,” said Bernie. “I told you we were at the Fontainebleau. The big guys were in a meeting in a suite upstairs with their
consiglieres
. Their
caporegima
were mostly in the bar by the pool keeping an eye on each other. There were a few soldiers, mostly older guys sitting in the hallways on those French chairs with the squiggly gold edges that nobody ever sits on, pretending to read newspapers. I saw her in the dining room. She looked right at me, not peeking and looking down, or any of that. She came to me and took me by the hand. We went for a long walk, and talked. All of a sudden she stopped, turned around, and started leading me back. I said, ‘Do we have to go back now?’ She said, ‘I thought you’d like to see my room.’ ”
    “You don’t need to tell me this.”
    “Yes,” he insisted. “I do. She locked the door and started taking off her clothes. It wasn’t like she had any experience at it, just determination. This was something she was going to do. She got down to the skin in about five seconds—sort of a ‘There. That’s done’ look on her face. Then she looked up at me for a minute. I’m still standing there with my mouth open. Finally she shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Tell me what to do.’ Do you understand?”
    Jane remembered. The event that you were warned about as most to be feared slowly became an obsession, until virginity was like carrying a handful of hot coals. “I think I do.”
    He nodded, and gazed at the rug for a moment. “That was how it happened. It wasn’t one of those things where she just lays there with her eyes shut tight and tolerates it while you work your will on her. She wanted to do everything a man and a woman ever did together. She just didn’t know how.”
    In spite of her resistance, Jane could feel it in her own memory. Of course that must always have been a part of it since time began—she remembered the fumbling and clumsiness because she hadn’t been exactly positive about howthings were supposed to happen, and had been so afraid that she might be awkward. She remembered the longing to have everything be beautiful and seamless, but it was impossible because she had been watching herself with a critical, unforgiving eye.
    “I didn’t know anything either,” said Bernie. “In those days, at that age you were just a kid. But we learned, like everybody does. We sneaked off six more times. Every time the bosses would disappear into the suite upstairs, she would find me.”
    “What happened afterward?”
    He sighed, and there was a rattly sound in his throat. “She said she was going to work it out with her father, and we would get married. I was a kid, and an outsider. I didn’t know what a job that was going to be. See, I didn’t really fit in. I was only there because I was working for the Augustinos in Pittsburgh.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Not much. In my one conviction, I was in with Sal Augustino. We were the same age. They didn’t have libraries and college courses and counselors. Radio wasn’t allowed. There weren’t many TVs anywhere, and there sure weren’t any in that prison. What you had was a cell and a bunk. I used to do tricks to keep myself from going crazy—describe baseball games I’d seen, batter by batter, you know? I had