“It’s all right,” Boyle reassured him. “It’s only me.”
Too late, Boyle registered that Dooley’s gaze wasn’t fixed on him at all, but on some sight over his shoulder. As he pivoted on his heel to snatch a glance at Dooley’s bugaboo a charging figure slammed into him. Winded and cursing, Boyle was thrown off his feet. He scrabbled about on the floor for several seconds before his attacker seized hold of him by jacket and hair and hauled him to his feet. He recognized at once the wild face that was thrust into his-the receding hairline, the weak mouth, the hunger-but there was much too he had not anticipated. For one, the man was naked as a babe, though scarcely so modestly endowed. For another, he was clearly aroused to fever pitch. If the beady eye at his groin, shining up at Boyle, were not evidence enough, the hands now tearing at his clothes made the assailant’s intention perfectly apparent.
“Dooley!” Boyle shrieked as he was thrown across the hallway. “In Christ’s name! Dooley!”
His pleas were silenced as he hit the opposite wall. The wild man was at his back in half a heartbeat, smearing Boyle’s face against the wallpaper. Birds and flowers, intertwined, filled his eyes. In desperation Boyle fought back, but the man’s passion lent him ungovernable strength. With one insolent hand holding the policeman’s head, he tore at Boyle’s trousers and underwear, leaving his buttocks exposed.
“God…” Boyle begged into the pattern of the wallpaper. “Please God, somebody help me But the prayers were no more fruitful than his struggles. He was pinned against the wall like a butterfly spread on cork, about to be pierced through. He closed his eyes, tears of frustration running down his cheeks. The assailant left off his hold on Boyle’s head and pressed his violation home. Boyle refused to cry out. The pain he felt was not the equal of his shame. Better perhaps that Dooley remained comatose; that this humiliation be done and finished with unwitnessed.
“Stop,” he murmured into the wall, not to his attacker but to his body, urging it not to find pleasure in this outrage. But his nerve endings were treacherous; they caught fire from the assault. Beneath the stabbing agony some unforgivable part of him rose to the occasion.
On the stairs, Dooley hauled himself to his feet. His lumbar region, which had been weak since the car accident the previous Christmas, had given out almost as soon as the wild man had sprung him in the hall. Now, as he descended the stairs, the least motion caused excruciating agonies. Crippled with pain he stumbled to the bottom of the stairs and looked, amazed, across the hallway. Could this be Boyle-he the supercilious, he the rising man, being pummeled like a street kid in need of dope money? The sight transfixed Dooley for several seconds before he unhinged his eyes and swung them down to the truncheon on the mat. He moved cautiously, but the wild man was too occupied with the deflowering to notice him.
Jerome was listening to Boyle’s heart. It was a loud, seductive beat, and with every thrust into the man it seemed to get louder. He wanted it: the heat of it, the life of it. His hand moved around to Boyle’s chest and dug at the flesh.
“Give me your heart,” he said. It was like a line from one of the songs.
Boyle screamed into the wall as his attacker mauled his chest. He’d seen photographs of the woman at the laboratories; the open wound of her torso was lightning-clear in his mind’s eye. Now the maniac intended the same atrocity. Give me your heart. Panicked to the ledge of his sanity he found new stamina and began to fight afresh, reaching around and clawing at the man’s torso. Nothing-not even the bloody loss of hair from his scalp-broke the rhythm of his thrusts, however. In extremis, Boyle attempted to insinuate one of his hands between his body and the wall and reach between his legs to unman the bastard. As he did so, Dooley attacked, delivering a hail of truncheon blows upon the man’s head. The diversion gave Boyle precious leeway. He pressed hard against the wall. The man, his grip on Boyle’s chest slicked with blood, lost his hold. Again, Boyle pushed. This time he managed to shrug the man off entirely The bodies disengaged. Boyle turned, bleeding but in no danger, and watched Dooley follow the man across the hallway, beating at his greasy blond head. He made little at-tempt to protect himself however. His burning eyes (Boyle had never understood the physical accuracy of that image until now) were still on the object of his affections.