up into little folds,
then smoothing it out again.

She'd ground out lipstick-smudged cigarettes until the ash tray was
spilling over.

Moonson began to watch the fear in her mind ...

Her fear grew when she thought that Mike wasn't gone for good. The phone
call wouldn't take long and he'd be coming back any minute now. And Mike
wouldn't be satisfied until she was broken into little bits. Yes, Mike
wanted to see her on her knees, begging him to kill her!

_Kill me, but don't hurt Joe! It wasn't his fault! He's just a kid--he's
not twenty yet, Mike!_

That would be a lie but Mike had no way of knowing that Joe would be
twenty-two on his next birthday, although he looked eighteen at most.
There was no pity in Mike but would his pride let him hot-rod an
eighteen-year-old?

_Mike won't care! Mike will kill him anyway! Joe couldn't help falling
in love with me, but Mike won't care what Joe could help! Mike was never
young himself, never a sweet kid like Joe!_

_Mike killed a man when he was fourteen years old! He spent seven years
in a reformatory and the kids there were never young. Joe will be just
one of those kids to Mike ..._

Her fear kept growing.

You couldn't fight men like Mike. Mike was strong in too many different
ways. When you ran a tavern with an upstairs room for special customers
you had to be tough, strong. You sat in an office and when people came
to you begging for favors you just laughed. Ten grand isn't hay, buddy!
My wheels aren't rigged. If you think they are get out. It's your
funeral.

It's your funeral, Mike would say, laughing until tears came into his
eyes.

You couldn't fight that kind of strength. Mike could push his knuckles
hard into the faces of people who owed him money, and he'd never even be
arrested.

Mike could take money crisp and new out of his wallet, spread it out
like a fan, say to any girl crazy enough to give him a second glance:
"I'm interested in you, honey! Get rid of him and come over to my
table!"

He could say worse things to girls too decent and self-respecting to
look at him at all.

You could be so cold and hard nothing could ever hurt you. You could be
Mike Galante ...

How could she have loved such a man? And dragged Joe into it, a good kid
who had made only one really bad mistake in his life--the mistake of
asking her to marry him.

She shivered with a chill of self-loathing and turned her eyes
hesitantly toward the big man in bathing trunks w