by Ed Lacy
“He doesn't have to go to any trouble,” Randall said, his eyes trying to stay off Hem's bosom.
“My dear sir, this is not trouble but the real—how you say —hospitality of the old islands. He will feel insulted if you refuse. Cap-a-tan Ray and myself will retire to the boat for a rest.”
“I sure don't want to insult the Chief. Say, will it be all right if I take some pictures?” Randall asked.
Henri told Eddie in Tahitian, “We have his money, don't blow the deal.”
Eddie said, “Tell him he's going to be able to get a picture of me busting your face!”
Heru said, “Talk, talk—it is hot out here.”
Henri looked at me and I told Randall, “They say you can take pictures but—don't be too obvious about it.”
Henri picked up Randall's bag and followed Eddie to the hut, Randall and Heru walking behind them, the air full of the heady scent of the tiare blossoms in her hair. At the entrance Henri turned and called out to Jack Pund, “You, bring the food in from the ship!”
Pund and I got into his canoe, paddled out to the Hooker, the old man saying, “This is crazy business. When we make movie and where is my ash tray?”
“In time we shall make a picture. The ash tray was purchased but by accident left behind in Papeete. You'll get it.”
I gave him the food, told him to give it to Eddie right away and he looked at the case of beer with big eyes, said he would dig a cool hole in the sand to store that at once.
Back on the beach Eddie and Henri waited for the canoe full of food. Eddie helped unload it as Henri rowed the dinghy out and jumped on deck, wiping his face and asking, “That Eddie, he nearly screwed the works. What's wrong with him?”
“I don't know, or maybe it's too long a story to tell you now. I'm turning in. I need sleep.”
“We have nothing to do now but wait. We should have charged more.”
“He would have gone for five hundred but you were so intent on your act, you didn't give him a chance.”
Henri shrugged, said in a grave voice, “One learns by experience.”
I checked the anchor, put a mat in the shade of the cabin, and went to sleep. I slept for a few hours and awoke when the sun hit my face. I moved the mat and while eating an orange, saw Randall in a pair of yellow swimming trunks yelling like a child as Eddie and Heru showed him how to spear the bright-colored reef fish. Eddie seemed to be enjoying it, too.
I knocked off a few more hours of shut-eye and awoke to find Eddie shaking my shoulder. Eddie said, “Your eye looks better. How was the trip?”
“Nothing to it. What did you do to Heru? She looks like something out of a book.”
Eddie smiled. “I didn't do anything to her. Just let her sleep and take it easy. Burns me up, a louse like Henri making money off such a pretty kid.”
I sat up and looked at the islet—no one was in sight. “What's playing now?”
“Randall is sleeping. The sun and running around pooped him. Heru is sleeping—by herself. Jack got to a couple of bottles of beer, and he's sleeping. The pimp is pounding his ear up near the bow. I have cooking stones heating in the fire pit and in a little while I'll shake Jack awake and start the 'feast.' This is sure sticky, us islanders doing all the work.”
“Hell, it's only an act. Tomorrow we pull out.”
“You get the dough?”
I nodded. “Have our half in my pocket.”
Eddie sat down and lit a cigar—a Stateside one he must have got from Randall. “Henri is a boy with real ideas. According to Heru he has an angle working he forgot to tell us. Plans to get the address of a guy like Randall and in a couple of months write him, in Heru's name, saying she is going to have a baby soon—his.”
“Blackmail?”
Eddie shook his head, blew out a fog of smoke. “Not exactly, rather a polite request for money to help out. She supposedly plans to go to a hospital in Papeete. Then maybe a note once a year thereafter, a gift for the 'young prince on his birthday.' With a dozen Randalls kicking in say, a hundred bucks a year, this would be a long-range jackpot for Henri.”
“That's a ratty deal.”
Eddie stared down at me through a crooked smoke ring. “And what does it make us? Cats? More I see of Henri, less I like him and I didn't care for him to start.” Eddie stood up and flexed his muscles. “Guess I'd better get back and start the food going. When do you think this slob will leave?”
“Sometime tomorrow. He isn't a bad sort.”
“This is a slimy deal and you're all smiles.”
“I'm feeling all smiles about something else.”
“That guy you belted?”
“Yeah. I've been wanting to wallop him for a long time. And he isn't a bad sort, either.”
“All the world is one big chum for you, it seems.” Eddie shook his head. “I don't know whether to feel sorry for Randall or bat him in his fat gut. The way he acts, as if this was real, he'd expect the islanders to fall all over him because he's a fat popaa with a few lousy trinkets.”
“Guess he means well. He just read to many phony books.”
“The islanders never read the books but they still get the wrong end of the stick. Got any rum?”
“No.”
“Good,” Eddie said. “Heru is itching for a shot, but beer will hold her. You're right, we're in this and we might as well take the dough. But this is the last time for me. See you when it gets dark.”
“Yes sir, acting chief.”
We both laughed and when Eddie paddled ashore I jumped over for a fast swim, then found more shade on the deck and went back to sleep. Henri awoke me. “The feast is about ready.”
It was twilight and I stared up at his sweaty shirt, dirty tie, the yellowed linen suit, asked, “Don't you ever put on clean clothes, take a bath?”
He swore in French. “What is eating you and your partner? All I get is insults.”
I sat up and slipped on my pants and a light sweater. “I was merely asking a polite question. By the way, don't let Heru lap up the beer. It's supposed to be a novelty to her— according to the script.”
“I will handle that bitch.”
“Bitch?” I repeated, pulling in the dinghy. “No way to talk about your meal ticket.”
Henri waved a modest hand. “Wasn't for me, silly little girls like Heru would be starving. I am her meal ticket.”
“You believe that?” I asked, as we got in the dinghy.
Henri gave me a fat-shouldered shrug for an answer.
Eddie amazed me; his feast was a first-rate job. We sat around palm leaves spread ner the fire pit, stuffed ourselves with tasty roast pig, fish baked in seaweed and lime juice, canned yams, a thick soup of some sort of greens, fish, rice, and shredded beef which was cooked and served steaming hot by the simple process of putting a hot stone into the pot.
Randall had a string of flowers around his thick neck, was wearing his seersucker suit but with the shirt open. He ate and sang and bragged about catching some of the fish we were eating, squeezed Heru's hand, “accidentally” touching her breasts now and then... the picture of a very happy fool.
I'd oiled my phonograph and we listened to scratchy music. When Eddie opened some beer bottles, Randall asked, “Beer? How did they get that?”
“My contribution to the feast,” I said.
“Say, that's right nice of you, Cap,” Brad said as he poured some into a coconut bowl and handed it to Heru. She took a sip, made a face, then spit the beer out as though she had never tasted the stuff before. Randall roared with idiotic laughter, downed the brew in one fast gulp.
Jack Pund, who had been watching Heru as if she was completely nuts, finished a bottle of beer and then stood up and did a crazy dance to the hill-billy record on my phonograph, throwing his arms and legs out as he spun around and around, finally hitting the ground and passing out.
Randall was impressed, said, “Seems an authentic war dance. Is he in a trance now?”
“Yes,” Henri told him. “And on t
he morrow he will be hung over from his trance. Well, we eat much, now we should sleep.”
Randall got up, went over and touched Jack Pund's heart. The old man immediately leaped up like a zombie, put a finger to his wet lips, then bounded off to return in a few minutes with his bug juice—an armful of fermented coconuts. These nuts must have been cooking since the first day we were on the islet and were powerful. Randall drank one, flushed, and a moment later joined Jack in a stupid dance, both of them lubbering about and trying to fling their feet high in the air.—
Henri, Eddie, and I watched the dance with pained looks —Heru was eyeing the rest of the fermented nuts. After a couple turns of this new dance, Jack hit the sand again, really out. Brad staggered around till Eddie led him to the hut, where he fell into a snoring sleep as soon as he touched the mats.
I tried one of the nuts and it immediately warmed my guts. Henri jerked Jack Pund to a sitting position, started bawling him out in French for making the bug juice. Since Pund couldn't understand much French, even if he was conscious, I thought it very funny—proving how strong the juice really was.
Henri was trying to twist Pund's ears when Eddie came over and said, “Let him go. He was only trying to be friendly.”
“Friendly?” Henri shouted, in Tahitian. “He almost spoiled everything!”
“Cut it,” Eddie said in English, “you give me more of a pain—”
“Watch it!” Henri screamed in Tahitian. “What are you saying?” and clapped a hand over Eddie's mouth.
Eddie pushed him away, sending Henri tumbling in the sand, then wiped his mouth, turned to me and asked, “What you standing like a dressmaker's dummy? Help me with Pund.”
We carried him over to the dinghy and I rowed him out to the Hooker, managed to roll Jack up onto the deck, then climbed aboard myself, full of food and drink. As I dozed off I could vaguely hear the tinny sound of the phonograph ashore, where Heru was sitting by the fire and playing records, marking time when Randall would come to and she could “sneak” into his hut. For a very short moment even in my drunken state it gave me a spooky feeling, a severe sense of wrong-doing. Then I told myself, so what, if he was in Papeete he'd be in her room anyway.
I had a nightmare in which I was arguing with Ruita on the porch of her house and she was saying, “If you go way, I shall go to Papeete.”
“You don't like Papeete.”
“I am still young, I can do things there.”
“What things?”
“You know what things.”
“You don't mean that. You're not like the... well.”
“Not like what?” Ruita asked. “Am I not a full-blooded islander? And is there anything finer for a native girl to do than whore around in Papeete bars?”
“Keep it up—you're saying this to annoy me.”
“Annoy you? You are leaving me, running out, and yet you accuse me of annoying you!”
I reached over and shook Ruita, saying, “All right, goddammit, stop it! Let's talk slowly—with sense.”
In my nightmare we went through this routine several times and when I was shaking her again, I awoke to see Jack Pund bending over me, his fat face almost in my whiskers.
He whispered one word, “Trouble!” As I sat up, I heard screaming on the islet and we both jumped into the dinghy, made for the shore.
It was quite a tableau: a nude Heru was sprawled on the sand, screaming and sobbing, one hand to her bruised face, her right cheek and eye swollen and cut. Eddie was kneeling beside her, trying to comfort Heru, although from the way she was beaten up, I was sure he must have socked her. Wearing his baby blue pajamas, Randall was yelling like an enraged bull at Henri, who was completely clothed as usual in his dirty linen suit.
From what I heard then—and later—it seemed Heru had finally gone to Randall's hut and after she left him snoring again, had lucked-up on a couple of Jack Pund's fermented coconuts. Then she kicked Henri awake and asked for her money. He had stupidly offered her the usual few francs, and she had blown her drunken top.
While she was cursing Henri for cheating her—in plain French and English—Dubon had hit her and she had screamed. The racket had aroused Eddie and Randall. Eddie went for Henri who pulled out his knife, and the two cussed each other out—all cuss words made in the USA. Of course Randall, hearing the three of them swearing at each other, realized he had been taken. Seeing Randall, Henri had put the knife away, tried to go on with the act.
There was something terribly pitiful about Randall's frantic rage as he called Henri every kind of miserable bastard; Brad seemed on the verge of an hysterical explosion. When I told him to take it easy, he turned on me and shouted, “You! You call yourself an American! My God, last night I envied you. You—you're as much scum as this crummy pimp!”
“Aw relax, big boy,” Henri said in straight English, minus the tourist accent. “What you getting into an uproar about? Sure it's all a fake, so what? So much noise is old hat. You wanted 'romance' with all the fancy trimmings, and that's what you got. It cost more than you're used to paying, but we did put on a hell of a show for you, a package deal which—”
Randall drew back his fist, swung like a hammer-thrower. He hit Henri high on the forehead. I was certain he'd busted his hand. The force of the wild blow made Dubon do a rubber-legged dance before landing on his back.
Dubon wasn't out. “It was a deal worth the money!” Henri wailed. He sat up and rubbed his head.
“You lice! You damn perverts!” Randall screamed, his voice breaking as he began to sob. “Who cares about the goddamn money! Don't you see what you've done to me? Don't you see what you've done!” He sprang on Henri and started choking him. Brad may have been an elderly man but he was also big, heavy and powerful. Even in the moonlight I could see Henri's face turning pasty pale as he clawed at Randall's hands.
I pulled at Brad's hands but couldn't get him loose. I grunted for Eddie. He came over and hit him in his heaving gut, a short little punch which not only made Randall let go of Henri, but roll over on the sand, grasping his belly, his mouth open wide as he could possibly get it.
Henri made it to his feet, his clothes a mess, blood streaming from nose and mouth. He stared down at Randall, who was still on his back like an overturned turtle, then sent a glob of bloody spit down on Randall as he said, “You crazy old—”
I pushed Dubon away. “Leave him alone. We've done him enough harm.”
Dubon put a hand to his nose to stem the blood, which started down his sleeve, as he said in Tahitian, “Sorry, something went wrong. But we have his money. And suckers never run to the police or tell others about—”
“Stop talking, you damn fool!” I yelled. If the whole thing had seemed cheap before, what we had done to Randall was now sheer tragedy. I felt crummy; not even thinking about socking Barry could shake the crummy feeling.
While I was standing there, staring at everybody and seeing no one, Randall sat up, his heavy face still wet with tears, lines of pain around his open mouth. I was about to say I was sorry, but no words came out of my dry mouth. Heru came over, one hand to her puffed eye. Her good eye stared solemnly down at Randall.
Henri, who had been stuffing his shirt in his pants, straightening out his clothes, turned on Heru with tiger-speed, shrilled, “You're the cause of all this, you dirty drunken—”
It was an all-around bad night for Henri. Eddie's left hook flicked through the air and crumbled Henri into a heap. No staggering or falling backwards; the clean sound of the fist hitting and Henri went down. It was the hardest punch I'd ever seen. I was positive Dubon was dead.
Randall moaned, “Oh, my, my...” while Eddie rubbed his knuckles and said, “There's something I been waiting to do for a long time. The slimy... slimy—” Eddie walked down to the water and carefully washed his knuckles.
Jack Pund bent over Dubon, said softly, “This one will never arise again.”
I pulled Randall to his feet, told him, “Look, Mr. Randall, there isn't much I can say. I kn
ow how you must feel, and I'm sorry. Sorry isn't much of a word but... Well, you'll get your money back.”
“It doesn't matter,” Brad said in a whisper. He rubbed his stomach, looked down at Dubon, muttered, “He's a pug, isn't he?” He nodded at Eddie who was coming towards us, shaking his wet hands.
“Used to be. He had to hit you or you would have murdered Dubon.”
“You're all thugs! Where's my clothes?” Randall turned and slowly walked to the hut, rubbing Henri's bloody spit off the side of his face. Heru shivered and put an arm across her bare breasts. The little cut over her eye had stopped bleeding. Eddie told her to get dressed, added, “I will get some raw fish for your eye.”