Heat of Night by Harry Whittington Page A

It was so thick it could be cut with a knife.
    Mal gazed around, feeling trapped. He’d thought being left alone on the grill with Juan and Rosa was as bad a thing as could happen to him. But this — alone with this malevolent football hero was even a new low. It was the sort of situation he dreaded. He’d started out the night gay, feeling almost young, almost alive again for the first time since Stella had divorced him. But now his thoughts were darker than the Gulf, wilder, with inner rages against himself and the Venzino family.
    He checked his watch, wondering if they had Dolores chained in a room somewhere.
    He walked to the screen door, stood framed in it, staring at the lowering sky, the way the bay seemed flat, as if withdrawing from the fury lashing across the Gulf, spiraling in on thick wind and black clouds.
    He couldn’t endure the silence.
    “Looks like a real storm brewing,” he heard himself saying. Hell, next they’d be discussing the crops.
    “Yeah,” Ric Suarez said. He got up and paced back and forth, unable to sit still, popping fist against palm.
    There was more silence and Mal said, “Some weather.”
    “Yeah.”
    “We — haven’t had a real twister — not a bad hurricane, not in years.” He despised the sound of his own voice, why couldn’t he cut it off? “Not in years.”
    “Yeah.”
    Mal shrugged. Even a football dummy should have learned more than one word. He glanced toward the kitchen, hearing Rosa banging pots around in there, but was unable to see her. He wondered if the kids ever came in until they were forcibly dragged in to their meals?
    “Hear you dropped out of football,” Mal said after an interminable three minutes of silence. Pebbles or debris or bits of palm frond were slapped against the roof by the rising wind. Silence moved charged and dry ahead of the storm. What the hell, if Suarez hated him so badly he could not speak, why make conversation with him, talk neither of you want, about matters in which you have no interest. You owe him nothing. Why not suggest goal posts at twenty paces?
    “Yeah.”
    What a lovely evening is building up here. “Too bad,” he heard himself saying. “You really had it one time.”
    He heard Suarez snatch in his breath and realized this was too near the truth. It rankled Suarez to realize someone else considered him a has-been, even if he already believed it about himself.
    “Yeah?” This time the word was a question, inflection hard and pointed.
    “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Ric. We’re all very proud of you here.”
    “Yeah.”
    Mal gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Me. I never could play football when I was in school. Too light. Not fast enough. If you’re light — you got to be fast.”
    “Yeah.” Ric stared at him and slapped his fist.
    “I was light. Light and slow, plodding.”
    “Yeah.”
    Mal exhaled. “You were fast. Well, it’s a big man’s game. A little man is a fool to buck it — I mean unless he loves it. I got stepped on a few times. I knew I had had it. Right then and there.”
    “Yeah.” Suarez prowled the room.
    “You probably wouldn’t think I was too light when I was a kid — I mean to look at me now.”
    “Yeah.” This didn’t mean anything.
    Mal walked out on the porch, letting the door slap behind him. The hell with Suarez. What was the sense of this, apologizing because he’d never played football? Jesus. He’d never even wanted to play football.
    The door slammed behind him and he turned thinking it was Suarez. It would relieve some of the tension in him just to take a poke at that neanderthal monster.
    “What’s the matter, Mal?” It was Dolores, in a simple print frock and a roll-collared cardigan against the rising wind. God, she was lovely.
    She took his arm, he felt relief flood through him. He could smell the elusive fragrance of her. He ached across the bridge of his nose, wanting her, loving her, needing her out of here, away from here.
    She looked up,