A Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  “It sure is, man. But I’ve got a chicken in my pack, and a couple bottles of wine. Tomorrow, Steve and Diane are bringing me another chicken.”

  “Then it’s not a real fast?”

  “Well, it sort of is. You get awful hungry.” He looked down, and rubbed his hand over the machete, and tears started to run down his face again. “I just wish he wouldn’t make me throw away my machete, though.”

  “You mean he’s making you throw away your beautiful machete?” I said.

  “Yeah. He said I got to throw it away, man. It’s part of my penance. I’m supposed to take it up on the bluff at St. Friday’s, and throw it out in the sea as far as I can. It’s a propitial offering” to the One God for my penance.” He looked at me.

  I didn’t have any ready answer to that one.

  “He’s going to buy me another one,” Chuck said, his face strained. “But I want to keep my old one.”

  “Yes. I suppose if you’ve had it a long time,” I said. “I suppose it gets to be, like, part of you.”

  “That’s it, exactly, man.”

  Whether he had killed Girgis and Marie or not, it was plain as hell his buddy Steve sure as hell thought he had.

  Suddenly, he started pouring out to me all the troubles of his life. First he looked at the stern to see if Sonny could hear. In his simple-minded distress, he seemed to forget he had ever been mad at me and was supposed to hate me.

  He had plenty of troubles. I got a picture of a kooky kind of semi-religious, knock-up kind of cult worship, not organized at all, cemented together and laced with an almost constant smoking of hash and pot. It sounded like enough to crack the nervous system of a lesser nut than Chuck.

  They believed in the right of freedom from work. They also believed in the moral obligation to steal, no sexual repression, love of nature and the protection of the woods and waters. Chuck had been appointed grand vizier. By Steve.

  But that wasn’t all his troubles. Not by a long shot. There was Diane. He was Diane’s second husband, he explained to me in a garbled way that made historical reference to polygamy, polyandry, Moslems and harems, only he didn’t use the big words. Steve was Diane’s first husband. He was second husband. One husband couldn’t take care of her, in the sack. But now he, Chuck, was falling in love with Diane and it was making his life a torment. Now in addition to all that, Steve was making him throw away his machete.

  “Let me see your machete,” I said. “May I?”

  “Sure, man.” He handed it over.

  “It sure is a beauty,” I said. I drew the blade half out. There were the celebrated bloodstains, rust-colored and brown, on the blade near the haft. The blade below was clean.

  “This looks like bloodstains?”

  “It is,” Chuck said. “That’s goat’s blood.”

  “It ruins a blade to leave blood on it. It rusts it.”

  “I know. I know all that, man. But that blood’s special. I had to fight a man once with that machete in Mexico. A Mexican. Blade to blade. He had his machete and I had mine, and I won. I swore I’d never wash his blood from my sword. If I washed that goat’s blood off there, there by the hilt, I’d wash his blood off, too, see?” He peered at me. “I keep the rest clean.”

  “That’s quite a souvenir,” I said.

  “Yeah. You see? You can see why it’s so hard for me to throw it away. Even as a penance.”

  I pushed the blade back in and hefted the scabbard. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I keep it for you? I’d hate to see you lose a souvenir like this. I think Steve’s wrong. This time. Let me keep it for you and in a couple of weeks, when Steve isn’t mad anymore, I’ll give it back to you.”

  He thought it over. If you could call it that, with him. “Okay,” he said. “That’s a deal.” He got up, and walked up to the prow and back a couple of times, agitatedly. “I think it’s a great idea, man. And I won’t tell Steve?”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t tell him.”

  “You don’t know what a help you are to me, man.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  I had been wiping the machete’s grip with my shirt tail. I held it out to him, holding it by the scabbard. “It’ll be safe for you with me.” He took it by the grip. Gently I pulled it back. He let go.

  “I’ll just put it where it’s safe,” I said, and got up and took it aft. I ran down the hatchway stairs and put it in the toilet cubicle, got the key from the inside and locked the door from the outside. I put the key in my pants pocket, and patted it. So I had it. And with it a perfect set of prints, if Pekouris wanted them. I came back up.

  “How long to St. Friday’s?” I asked Sonny.

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Well, hurry it up. As much as you can.”

  I went back forward. Behind me the motor went up in pitch several tones. Chuck was sitting with his arms spread along the rail-rope, happily smoking a cigarette and looking as if a great load was off his mind. I just hoped it would last. But I was afraid it wouldn’t.

  St. Friday’s was just as pretty as they had said it was. The fine sand beach ran on back to become a sandy loam strewn with rocks, on which grew a grove of high old pines that soughed gently in the sea breeze. A carpet of brown needles covered the loamy ground. The chapel was a low one-story building of whitewashed stone with an ancient red tile roof and a Greek cross at one end tilted slightly askew. It gave the chapel a rakish look, as if it were winking at you. Somebody had tried to steal it apparently, but hadn’t been able to get it loose.

  There wasn’t a living soul anywhere.

  In all that tranquility I made the bow line fast at the concrete dock built against one rock wall of the little cove, and put over the bumpers while Sonny made fast the stern line.

  Then I helped Chuck off with his pack. I brought him up a couple of extra bottles of wine from my store below. He took the bottles and set them on the dock by his pack and then turned back to me. I stepped off onto the dock.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said sullenly. “And I’ve decided I want my machete back.”

  Chapter 45

  I GUESSED I WAS MORE or less expecting it. I wasn’t exactly surprised. Just too much time had passed. Even he could figure it out in ten minutes.

  “Oh?” I said. “How come?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it, man. And I’d rather have it myself,” he said.

  “If you do, you’ll wind up throwing it out in the sea like Steve wants you to.”

  “There’re plenty of places here I can hide it.”

  “You bury it and you’ll ruin it. It’ll rust.”

  “Don’t kid me, man.” He made a little half smile that was more a snarl. “I want it. It’s mine.”

  “I think you’d be a lot smarter if you let me keep it for you,” I said.

  His voice started to get higher. “You think you’re fooling me? You talked me into giving it to you. You even got me to put my fingerprints on it.”

  “Come on,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Listen, man. That’s my machete. Just give it to me, man.” He began to snap his fingers, both hands, the way I’d seen him do, the way Steve was constantly watching him for. He started to bounce agitatedly up and down on his toes.

  “Well, I guess I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m going to keep it for you, anyway.”

  He began to yell a stream of curses at me. “Motherfucker. Cocksucker. Shit-eater.” A string of variations. “That’s cheating. It’s not fair. You’re a sneak. Give me my machete.”

  “I’m keeping it,” I said.

  “I’ll make you give it to me,” Chuck screamed.

  “Okay,” I said. “Make me.”

  He was really very fast. One second he was standing in front of me. The next second he had danced in, delivered me a front groin kick in the crotch, and danced back out. All before I finished getting the words out of my mouth. I just didn’t see it. Maybe I’d been expecting to
talk a little longer.

  Pain engulfed my crotch and shot up in rays through my groin like an aurora. Right after it came the slow, sick nausea in the pit of the stomach that you get. But the kick seemed light. As if he’d pulled it to get back away.

  My instinct was to retch and try to vomit. But I was damned if I would. I wasn’t Stevie-boy. I wasn’t one of his punk kid opponents at the Construction, either. I gave him a grin and went after him, and I could see the surprise in his eyes. He’d expected me to keel over.

  He came at me again, all set to groin kick, by his body stance. I slid left and leaned in to him and hit him with a hard left jab that went through his guard to his nose and rocked him back. His kick missed and he danced back. I followed him.

  I was more than just furious. I was crazy mad. The pain in my crotch and the pain in my side were already enough. But I was thinking about Marie and Girgis, and all the rest of it. There was a kind of crazy joy in it, too, that made my head burn as if seared. I didn’t care if he killed me. If he did, I’d kill him along with me.

  He came in again, and I did the same thing: slid left and jabbed. After he missed that kick and I had punched him again, he slammed a right-hand chop into the side of my neck that did me no harm at all. I hit him in the belly with a right that hurt him. When he danced away I followed again.

  He was losing ground to me. And his nose was already swollen from my two jabs. I noticed something else. He was fast but he didn’t carry much weight behind his punches and kicks. Curiously, his blows didn’t carry much conviction, or authority, as if his heart wasn’t really in fighting, like mine was. I gave him a mean grin.

  He was “Hoo!”-ing and “Hah!”-ing, like they teach you in the suburban karate classes, but I saved my breath. Silence can be as scary as noise. And karate was like with everything else. You had to be good at it, to be effective. That was why I preferred fist fighting. It was natural to me. Chuck wasn’t that good. He was good enough to terrorize some kid at the Construction, was all.

  When he came in again, he tried to tag me with a leaping high kick. I reached out my left and swung it up under his ankle and dumped him. He lit on his back. It knocked the wind half out of him, but he rolled free and up to his feet very fast. I gave him another grin.

  This time he had desperation on his face when he came in. He was going to give me a front groin kick with his right foot, from the way he moved. I moved to get inside it, taking a chop to the cheekbone that numbed my cheek, and he shifted his weight and kicked out with his left foot again. Just like the first time. I seemed to be a patsy for that one.

  Pain exploded in my testicles, but I was where I wanted: inside. I hit him with a left hook in the belly that knocked all the wind out of him, and then sunk my right fist into the side of his head as hard as I could hit him. He went flying, and lit on his back two steps away. I took the two steps, though it hurt me, and grabbed him by his shirt and jerked him to his feet and hit him with everything I had, just above the angle of his jaw, and let go. He went sprawling, and I followed and got his shirt and jerked him up again. I was intending to do the same thing. I was willing to keep on doing it just about forever. But something stopped me.

  He was out on his feet. His glasses were long since gone, knocked off somewhere, and his eyes were glazed and rolling around in his head. Fine. All that was fine. But syllables came out of his mouth that didn’t make any words. It sounded like, “Tra ga go ka gye dye.”

  I suspected he was still cursing me, or thought he was.

  I wanted to break him apart. I hoped Pekouris gave him everything he could give him. I didn’t care if they gave him the firing squad. But I made myself put my hand down.

  There was no point in breaking his jaw for fun. Instead, I grabbed a handful of his shirt with my left hand, and softly shook him back and forth. He just sort of dangled. I let go of him and he sat down.

  I walked away toward the boat, waddling from the pain in my crotch, wanting to vomit, my side shooting pains every time I breathed. What a way to make a living. I was getting too old for it.

  Behind me Chuck began to come out of it. He struggled to get to his feet, and made it as far as his knees. The syllables he had been mouthing turned back into curses, which he now screamed at me like a girl. He didn’t have a lot of grace in defeat.

  On the dock his glasses that had been knocked off in the fight were lying there, somehow miraculously undamaged. That seemed grossly unfair to me. Almost automatically, I made as if to grind them under my heel. He’d have one hell of a time replacing them, here. But the same something stopped me.

  Instead, I picked them up and looked at them. They were sure thick.

  Holding them up for Chuck to see, I whistled. When I was sure he was looking at me, I snapped them in two at the bridge, and tossed them into the seven-foot-deep water and said,

  “Dive for them, you son of a bitch.”

  Chuck peered at me myopically with his bad eyes, then peered myopically at the water. “I’ll get you for that,” he screamed. “I’ll get you for everything.”

  “You do that,” I said. “Bring all your friends.”

  I nodded to Sonny. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Sonny, for God’s sake.”

  As we rounded the far point of the tiny cove out of sight, Chuck was rummaging in his Kelty pack and pulled out a face mask.

  Chapter 46

  “I NEVER SAW ANYTHING like that,” Sonny said to me admiringly from the helm. “I didn’t think a boxer could whip a karate man.”

  “I’m not a boxer,” I said. “And I probably couldn’t whip a grand master of karate. I couldn’t whip Cassius Clay, either.”

  “Well, I never saw an exhibition like it. Don’t your balls hurt?”

  “Yes. They do. Now shut up and leave me alone.” I turned away, then turned back.

  “Listen, I want you to take me straight over to Glauros. When we round the end of the island, head straight over.” I still had just time to catch Pekouris before his plane left.

  “Does this mean the Girgis case is closed?” Sonny said.

  “This means nothing. At all. And the Girgis case is already closed,” I said. “Pekouris closed it himself. Remember?”

  “I guess you’ve heard the story about how Chuck killed some Mexican with that machete,” Sonny said.

  “I have,” I said. “You just told it to me. Chuck told it to me. Pekouris told me. Just about everybody’s told me. Now, shut up and let me alone. And you just keep your mouth shut about this fight.”

  I waddled forward and sat down gingerly on the coach-roof. As bad as my crotch was hurting me, my side was worse. It sent stabbing shooting pains clear through me each time I had to breathe.

  In spite of that, something was tickling at my mind. I sat still and reached down in and fished around for it. When I brought it up, I found it was a conviction that had been forming, that crazy Chuck the karate man wasn’t guilty. I knew he just hadn’t killed either party.

  I just knew he wasn’t guilty. And I knew it strongly enough to be willing to act on it.

  I didn’t know how I had arrived at it. It was another of those obscure combinations of associations. Like my premonition about Marie’s body. Chuck’s nut’s face. Steve’s fear, of everything. How Chuck talked about the speedboat. How he tried to keep on cursing me when he was out. How he was smart enough to figure it out about the fingerprint bit. How he admitted his intention to throw away the machete.

  Any two, any three, yes. Acceptable. But not all of them together.

  Whatever the reasons, I was convinced Chuck hadn’t killed Marie, or Girgis either. Someone else had done that.

  That presented me with a beaut of a problem. What if I went ahead and delivered the machete to Pekouris? Would Pekouris go ahead and try to use it anyway? I didn’t like Chuck worth a damn, but I wasn’t going to be an instrument in railroading him on a murder rap just the same. And now I knew there was human blood on the machete. The Mexican’s. True, it was old. But what if t
he lab experts were able to isolate it? What if they couldn’t tell the blood type? Or what if they could tell the blood type, and the Mexican’s was the same as Girgis’s?

  I was still full of fury. I sat on the coach-roof, brooding. I was feeling the let-down that comes after the end of a fight, and you don’t feel the satisfaction you thought you would. Was I feeling a little sorry for goofy Chuck? Was I thinking about Marie, who couldn’t be brought back, whose murder couldn’t be undone even if I solved it?

  After a minute I got up and waddled back to Sonny in the stern.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I told him. “I don’t want to go to Glauros. I want to go straight back home to the yacht harbor.”

  Chapter 47

  BECAUSE I DIDN’T GO OVER to see Pekouris with the machete, I had an hour to wait before Pete Gruner would show up at Dmitri’s.

  I locked the machete in the lockup closet with my locked briefcase. I had carried it up unobtrusively from the taverna deck, and nobody had even noticed it. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. But I wasn’t going to turn it over to Pekouris.

  With all the rest that had happened to me, now I was guilty of secreting evidence. In America that would make me an accessory after the fact. In Greece I didn’t know what it would get me, probably decapitated.

  After the machete was taken care of, I went through my first-aid inspection routine. It was getting to be a daily thing, just about. Like having to shave, or change my underwear.

  I went in the bathroom and locked the door and inspected my testicles. They weren’t swollen up, thank God. But they were sore as hell. I could hardly stand to touch them. The nausea was gone, and the sharp pain. But there was a constant ache in them, especially when I strained or tensed my thighs or walked. I wouldn’t be of use to Chantal tonight.

  My side seemed to have gotten worse, and felt inflamed. But there wasn’t much I could do for it. The bandage was still in good shape, and still tight. I couldn’t do much for my balls, either. I could hardly bandage them. I didn’t know any bandages for testicles.