by M. S. Karl
“Yes? Do we know each other?”
“I don’t think. But we know the same people.”
“Oh?”
There was the first glimmer of doubt in her eyes then, but she was not yet alarmed. It was the name of LaCour that did it. When I said his name she had trouble controlling her face and I saw her eyes, under the smoky lenses, hunt for the camp and then come back to me with the realization that we were isolated in the cove.
But she would try to bluff it through at first: “LaCour? You mean Paul? Sure, he’s a fun guy. Were you at one of his parties? They were real swinging bashes. Man, he had good vibes.”
“Treat you well, did he?”
She shrugged, “I told you, he was all right, a neat guy. Why?”
“He’s dead.”
It took a moment for her to react, and then she shook her head as if she did not believe it.
“Dead? But I—”
“Go on …”
“What’s this about?” The model’s poise had crumbled. She was afraid. “He was fine when I saw him.”
“You were living with him,” I stated. She started to be angry and saw it would do no good.
“Well, so what? I mean, I told you, he was nice to me. Who are you, anyway?”
“You don’t know?”
I threw it in to scare her, and it worked.
“I want to go back.”
“Not yet.” I stepped into her path.
“You can’t keep me here.”
“No?” I caught Laurie’s face out of the corner of my eye and saw she was taking a grim satisfaction in it all.
“Look.” She tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. “Look, mister, I, mean, man, I don’t know anything about him being dead.”
“And you didn’t take anything from his house?”
She was having trouble controlling her face now and her arms were trembling.
“What?”
“Do you want me to repeat it?”
“Look, man, it was just junk. I mean, a few rings and stuff like that. Old coins, for chrissakes. The guy was rich. He won’t miss them.”
I took her purse before she could protest and dumped the contents onto the sand. I saw it then, a manila envelope like the one with the photos. I opened it quickly and slid the plastic holders into my hand. Each holder bore a sequence of negatives from a 35mm roll. Her tongue flicked over her lips and her eyes darted from the negatives, to me, to the camp.
“Did you take these after you killed him?”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Please. I never killed anybody. It wasn’t even my idea, it was Steve’s. He said, ‘Why not rip him off?’ I mean, the man’s fabulously rich. It’s a sin to have that much money. To have servants wait on you hand and foot. I mean, what the hell are a couple of rings and things? I don’t know what those things are, I just found them. I thought maybe they were something …” She saw she had committed herself and tried to backtrack. “But I was going to throw ’em away, I swear to Christ.”
“Sure you were,” I said. “You were going to throw them away for a price. After you found out who the other two women were.”
“No, I swear to Jesus fucking-A Christ. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t know those women if I saw them.” She took a step backward. “Look, we can work something out. Paul thought I was pretty good. Have you seen the ones with me in ’em? I can show you the real thing. We could make a threesome, right? I mean, I swing, AC-DC—anything you want. We can do it all three together. You won’t be sorry. Anyway you want to play. Starting right here.” A nervous hand plucked at the drawstring of her bikini. A second later she was standing in front of us naked, her bronzed body inviting. The wind ruffled the dark little brush between her legs and she brought her hands up under her full breasts as if to offer them up.
“The only fun I want is from taking you back to Tabasco,” I said. “There’s an innocent man in jail there.”
“But I swear, I told you, I didn’t do anything.”
“You, your boyfriend. You’re in it together.”
“No. You’re fucking wrong, I tell you. We took a few fucking things, that’s all. I’m telling you straight.”
“Sure. Meanwhile, a man’s in jail. Do you know what a Mexican jail is like?”
“Look, when was he killed? At least tell me that.”
So I gave her the date.
“Are you sure? I mean, no lie?”
“No lie.”
“Then you can see for yourself. I couldn’t have been there. Look.” She scrambled for the pile of things I had dumped out of her purse and came up with a red airline ticket blank. She waved it in triumph. “We left the day before. Call the airline if you don’t believe me. Look at the passenger list.”
I saw the date on the blank and on the envelope that had served as a boarding pass. I believed her. She could have flown back, but it made little sense. Her boyfriend might have come a day later, but the certainty had gone out of me and left me deflated. We had the negatives, at last, but we had also reached a dead end.
“Let’s go,” I said to Laurie, and left the girl called Vivian standing naked in the cove, her possessions at her feet.
I was aware of very little until the cab stopped at the hotel. It was new, just as everything else on the coast was new. Once Grijalva’s ships had crept up this coast, and once Montejo’s exploratory party had halted here to rest on the first leg of their long journey into the interior. Montejo’s expedition hadn’t worked, and I wondered if the hotels would.
I looked at my watch. It was late: four-thirty. Laurie had told the pilot tomorrow. Tomorrow might be too late for the man in the cell. But there was no way back before then. And even if there were, what good would it do? We had gotten what we wanted, what she wanted, anyway. But I had struck out.
I paid the driver, and followed Laurie through the glass doors of the new building where sudden cold hit us from the air conditioning. A couple of swimmers in trunks stood in the lobby. While Laurie admired the white beach and green sea, I asked for two rooms and signed our names.
The rooms were on the second floor and faced the sea, with a walkway that went past the doors. When the bellboy was gone, I turned to Laurie. “I think I’ll get some rest before dinner.”
“It was a real bummer for you, wasn’t it?”
“Does it show that much?”
“Yes. David, who the hell are you, anyway?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Her head gave a little nod of acceptance. I closed the door and started for the shower. But I didn’t make it. I fell on the bed, instead.
Chapter Ten
The dining room overlooked the sea and you could see the waves coming in white-maned to fall upon the beach. I ordered shishkebab and figured the hotel must be owned by a Lebanese. I also asked for a round of daiquiris and hoped they knew how to make them. They didn’t, but at that point I was beyond caring.
I saw Laurie’s eyes on mine, the pupils wide, and when she caught my return gaze she gave a little smile. “This is a far cry from trying to kill you,” she said.
“The thought’s occurred,” I said, and relapsed into my mood. Her hand touched my arm across the table.
“David, you told me this afternoon you’d explain what this was all about. Don’t you think it’s time now?”
“Did I? Well, I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Start with the truth. You aren’t really a writer, are you? I mean, you just don’t fit the part. That’s what intrigues me. You don’t fit any other part, either. So what are you?”
“I’m a spy,” I said.
“I’d almost believe that. Except that if you are, you’re the lousiest spy of all time. Going around asking questions like that. Tell me, are you a member of his family?”
“What would you believe?”
“I don’t know. Try me. But give me something better than before.”
“I’m all out of imagination.” And I was out of caring, too. I could imagine Kestering ove
rhearing this conversation and the thought of the look it would bring to his face made me smile.
“So what’s funny?” she asked.
“Nothing. Look.” I took her hand in mine. “Try this on for size: I work for a concern that is interested in what happens to Bassett. Don’t ask a lot of questions. Let’s just say that LaCour had some important business connections internationally, but mainly in the States. I’m a lawyer for the firm. Not a terribly senior one, but I know enough about the international ramifications to make me right for the job. If LaCour was killed for certain reasons, it could be very bad for business. Even reduce the stock to almost nothing. It could be a question of industrial espionage. Do you understand now?”
She nodded slowly. “But his business was just import-export of farm machinery.”
“He was also a director of certain Mexican corporations.”
“And you don’t think the man they put in jail is guilty?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There are things a person has to feel. I don’t know how to explain. I don’t even like the man. I talked to him once in his cell. He’s the opposite of what I admire: self-pitying, cowardly, a cop-out on life. You only get one go-round, Laurie, and he’s managed to screw his up with nobody else’s help.” I was surprised at my sudden vehemence and saw her face frown in the candlelight. “Maybe I’m just a slave to the Protestant ethic.” I tried to laugh it off. “But somehow a man just has to do what he has to do.”
“And that’s what you’re doing now.”
I thought of Leah and where she might be at this moment, in some other candle-lit nook half a world away. Damn her. “That’s what I’m doing,” I said. “I guess it’s just how I am.”
“I kind of like it.”
“You’re a good kid.”
A quick flash of pique changed just as rapidly to amusement. “Don’t underestimate me. Just because I’m younger than you are.”
“I know. You can hold up a big gun.”
She let it pass. “If you dislike him, why are you so sure he’s innocent?”
“A hunch? Does that sound right? Laurie, I don’t think he has the guts. I think you have to feel things deeply to care enough to kill someone. You have to care about love, or money, or freedom, or some principle. But I don’t think Bassett cares about anything. I think he’s adjusted to being in jail. He might as well be in as out. He’s dead inside.” And as I said it, my conscience twisted my guts, and I thought of him now, under questioning. “But no matter what kind of man he is, if he didn’t do it, he shouldn’t be punished for it.”
“Were you born this way or was it your upbringing?” Her laughing eyes went serious when she saw me react. “What is it? Did I say something?”
How could I explain? It was like having clouds pass over my memories. A glimpse of earth here and there …
“Nothing,” I said.
She dipped her fork into the Napolitano the waiter had brought for dessert. “David, are you married?”
We both knew she’d ask it and I had not known until then how I would answer.
I nodded affirmatively. “Yes. But when I get back she won’t be there.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and we both knew it was a lie.
“Café?” The waiter interrupted.
“Never drink it,” I said without thinking.
“But I do.” Laurie smiled.
And so we sat at the little table watching the stars frost up the sky. She talked about her own childhood and her relationship with her father, and I began to build a picture of him in my mind, taller than other men, and stronger, and firm, yet infinitely patient and kind. It was the type of picture that only death builds.
When dinner was over she wanted to walk on the beach. I let her go a few steps ahead of me and watched her figure outlined by the lights from the hotel. I thought of LaCour and what he had done to her, and then I thought of Leah, and finally I thought of the late Denton Whitcomb. That had been his name, E. Denton Whitcomb—rancher, explorer, man of affairs.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to me lately,” she said as if we had been on the same wavelength. Far out on the sea there were the lights of a boat, crossing slowly from one side of the horizon to the other. “For a long time I couldn’t think about it at all, not even with the psychiatrist. I went to Dr. Mendoza but somehow every time he mentioned it, I just—went into panic. I went off to school and took a psychology class.”
“That’s always dangerous.”
“Don’t joke. This is important.” She brushed her hair out of her face, but it fell back. “I began to see what made it so psychically devastating. You see, my father was a man I loved and admired hugely. But there was also envy and hate because of my mother. I hadn’t ever resolved that. I just repressed it, see? I had desires, physical desires for him, but as long as I wasn’t forced to confront them it was all right. When he died, I completely repressed everything about him that was less than perfect. And I shut away those desires of my own. Repression’s a powerful mechanism. Sometimes it’s the only way we can survive.”
Somewhere I had heard the lecture before. Someone else had told me that the mind had a way of shutting itself off from the painful. Laurie went on, “Then, when that thing happened with him, it brought it all back.” Him, I realized, was LaCour. She would never say his name and it was understandable. “He was older and, though he wasn’t like my father, it made me face the fact—somewhere deep down, that my father’d had that side of him, too. But I got confused. I confused my picture of my father, my idealization, really, with the man who did that to me. He was my father’s worst side in my unconscious and I had to get rid of it. The only way to do that was to reject all sexual experience.” She cocked her head slightly, and I saw the little freckles on her nose bunch up. “Does any of this make any sense to you?”
I nodded, trying to concentrate on what she was saying.
“But since I’ve met you. Well, I have a feeling things have changed. You’re older than I am. Not as old as my father was, but still—old enough.”
All the alarms were going off in my head now, but she didn’t hear them. “David, do you think I’m attractive? Oh, I don’t mean ravishing. Not like that girl today, but I wouldn’t want to be like that. I know my mouth is too wide and I have freckles and I’m a little on the skinny side. But am I attractive as a woman?” I started to answer again but she was not ready. Instead, she went on walking and I kept close to her side so I could hear her, but sometimes her words were taken by the wind. “Sometimes … felt that … I was dirty … no man would want … woman who had been raped.”
I stopped, took her shoulder, and held a hand under her chin. “Laurie, you are a woman and you’re very attractive. Any man would …” I didn’t know what else to say, but I saw her eyes glisten.
“Promise?” she asked.
“I promise.”
“Look,” she said, holding out her arm as we turned around to start back. “I’m not shivering anymore when I talk about it.”
But I was. All the way back. Until we stood outside the door to my room, trying to get the key to fit.
“Silly, that’s the wrong key.” She took it and used the other key and it opened. I went in and sat on the bed. I wanted to lay it out for her, to explain. But what good would it do? How do you tell it without sounding like a soap opera?
“You look very tired,” she said, and moved to the bed. Her hands touched my neck and soon she was massaging me, kneading my shoulders and neck. I felt the bed move and heard her leave the room.
A few moments later the door opened again, the bed swayed, and her fingers touched my back, and then reached under to unbutton my shirt. She was humming a little tune as her hands worked, taking the stiffness out of my muscles. When she bent over I felt the brush of lace. Then her hands were urging me over, and I turned slowly to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, clad only in a black negligee. She smiled, a little self-consciously at
first, but she reached for me anyway, rubbing her hands across my torso. I should have been feeling something; I was feeling it but my body simply wouldn’t work.
“Laurie …”
“Hush.”
I saw her little breasts, tipped by dark centers, jiggle under the sheer material, and she watched my eyes go down to the little tuft at the bottom of her belly. She leaned toward me, no longer a little girl searching for her father, and I felt her lips on mine and I kissed her back, and felt her tongue in my mouth, probing and darting away. Her arm stretched out for the light switch and the room went dark. I held her clumsily and wondered if Leah was doing this in someone else’s bed. Laurie’s hand found my belt, tugged, and her body was on mine, trembling, and her hands were tugging at my pants when I turned slowly, still holding her, and sat up.
“Laurie,” I said. “Please. Try to understand. It can’t be now.”
Even in the dark I could see the effect on her face. I touched it softly with my fingers. “I meant what I said. But I can’t explain. It’s just that …”
She seemed to shrink, withdrawing to the other side of the bed like a threatened animal. “You—you told me it didn’t matter, you said …”
Now there was hurt; next there would be anger, breaking like a storm, and all I could do was ride with it.
“I meant every word. It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter to any decent person. I think you’re, well, pretty special. But what you want right now … I’m not the right person.”
“You let me do this … Why did you let me go this far?”
“I …”
How do you talk about hope? So I didn’t say anything. Instead, I watched her leave the bed, stand for a moment in the dark without moving, and then leave, going out like the wind through the dunes.