by Stuart Woods
“I mean it’s time to switch on that radio and call the troops in. Tomorrow at dawn, I’ll go jogging. I’ll run down to where they’re building the airstrip and set up the radio there. Then we have to position ourselves near the main house. When we hear the first chopper, we run upstairs to Prince’s quarters and lock ourselves in with Prince and Jinx until the shooting is over. What do you think?”
“His quarters will be guarded.”
“We’ll shoot our way in, if necessary, but I’m depending on you to talk us in.”
“Well,” she said, “I guess I’d have a pretty good view of things from Prince’s windows, wouldn’t I?”
He grinned. “I guess you would.” He leaned over and kissed her. She pulled him down onto the bed and nestled her head on his shoulder. Soon, she was asleep. It was just as well, he thought. He had been about to tell her about the other thing he was going to do tonight, but perhaps it was better if she didn’t know.
• • •
Cat dressed for dinner, and while Meg was in the bathroom, he removed the false bottom from the canvas-and-leather grip and took out the H&K automatic pistol. He slipped into the shoulder holster, screwed the silencer into the barrel, and tried to fit the gun into the holster. It wouldn’t fit with the silencer on. He unscrewed the silencer and put it into his trousers pocket, then slipped the pistol into the holster.
There were no place cards at dinner that evening. Cat and Meg took seats near the door, at the opposite end of the table from Prince and Jinx. The dinner was somewhat more convivial than the evening before. People were getting to know each other. Cat found himself sitting next to the Englishman he had seen wearing the heavy suit the evening before. He was more comfortably dressed now.
The Englishman introduced himself. “Where are you from, old boy?” he drawled.
“Southeastern United States,” Cat replied.
“I’m a Londoner, myself,” he said. He had had a lot to drink. “I live in Berkshire at the moment, but I expect I’ll be taking a place in town again before long.” He winked broadly. “Once the stuff starts to come in, you know. Property’s awfully good value in London these days. I’m thinking of Eaton Square.”
“Nice neighborhood,” Cat said.
“The bloody Duke of Westminster owns the whole fucking thing, you know.”
“I’d heard.”
“We were in the army together.”
“Were you?”
“Yes, indeed. Not what you’d call close, but still, I expect he’d be glad to have me in Eaton Square. The old regiment, and all that.”
“It helps to have connections, I guess.”
The Englishman winked again. “You had one of these girls yet?”
“No.”
“Bloody marvelous they are. Had one last night, an American.”
Cat stiffened.
“The Anaconda must treat them bloody well. She was damned enthusiastic.”
Cat said nothing.
“I understand there’s a little show at the disco tonight. You going?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Oh, you must, old fellow. Everyone’ll be there. Bloody good show, they say.” He winked again, but then his eyes did something odd.
Cat turned and followed his gaze. The dining-room doors had opened, and an Indian dressed in a plain khaki uniform, carrying an automatic weapon, stood in the doorway. There was a girl with him. He was holding her by the hair.
“Good God!” the Englishman spat. “She’s mine! I mean, the one I had last night!”
The girl was trembling violently and crying. There was a dust of white powder on her nose and upper lip. The room had gone very quiet.
From the other end of the room, Cat heard a chair scrape on the floor and footsteps walking the length of the table. Still, he could not take his eyes off the terrified girl. Prince walked into his vision, toward the girl. He moved calmly, deliberately. He approached the girl and stopped. The soldier said something Cat couldn’t catch. Prince reached down to the holster on the soldier’s belt, unsnapped it, and removed a .38-caliber pistol from it. The soldier yanked backward on the girl’s hair, and when she began to cry out, Prince put the barrel of the pistol into her mouth and fired. A long spray of blood and gore spurted from the back of her head, and she went limp. Prince handed the pistol to the guard, then turned to face his audience.
“I’m terribly sorry to have interrupted your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, but my rule against the use of drugs has been violated, and it was necessary for me to take steps. Please go on with your meal.” He motioned to a waiter, who produced a napkin and began mopping up the blood. The guard dragged the girl from the room by her hair. Prince returned to his seat.
Cat sat, frozen. Meg picked up a glass of water and sipped it. Her face was pale. The Englishman made an odd noise, then got up and stumbled from the room, a napkin pressed to his mouth. A murmur rose from the crowd again, this time subdued. Cat looked down the table to where Jinx was. She sat, staring vacantly ahead, her lower lip trembling.
Cat wished to God he did not have to wait until morning to confront the Anaconda. If he had had any doubts before about what he would do to him, he had none now.
31
THEY STOPPED AT A FORK IN THE PATH. “HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” Cat asked.
“Ill,” Meg replied. “You know, I’ve seen people killed before. I’ve even seen people executed. In the Philippines I saw half a dozen men made to kneel, then shot in the back of the head by Communist guerrillas. But I’ve never seen anything quite so deliberately . . . casual. I think Prince is insane—and I need hardly point out—very dangerous.”
Cat nodded. “That could as easily have been Jinx.”
“It will be, eventually, if you don’t get her out of here.”
“I know. I’m going to do it tomorrow. Right now, though, I think you should go back to the cottage and get some rest. I’m not ready for bed yet.”
“Be careful,” she said, kissing him lightly. She walked on toward the cottage.
Cat stood and watched her go for a moment, then he turned and walked toward the discotheque, a building tucked away behind some trees a hundred yards from the main house. He struggled to maintain his composure. The anger that he had so carefully kept under control since the act of piracy on the yacht now threatened to overwhelm him, and the wanton murder of the girl had increased the pressure. Some part of him had known all along that he would- do what he was going to do this evening, but still the realization surprised him.
He opened the door to the building, and a wall of noise struck him. Perhaps it was music, he couldn’t tell, but the volume was staggering. He put his hands to his ears and squinted. There was some sort of light show in progress, and it seemed to be coordinated with the music, but no one was dancing. People, mostly men, stood on tiers descending to the dance floor, watching something. Cat walked to the rear of the crowd and stood on tiptoes to see.
On a mat spread on the dance floor, two young Indian men, prodigiously built, were dancing with a very beautiful blonde girl. As Cat watched, one of the men stretched out on the floor, and the girl knelt between his legs. She bent over him and took his penis into her mouth, leaving her hips raised. The other man rubbed his huge, tumescent organ with a lubricant, then entered her from behind. The three of them moved, locked in their bizarre sexual dance.
Cat looked away, nearly ill. She was no older than Jinx, and she seemed both drugged and frightened. Some of the crowd were shouting encouragement over the hideous music.
Cat forced himself to look around the audience carefully, and he found who he was looking for, standing at the edge of the crowd, near the front. The show seemed to have just started, and Cat had the feeling it would go on for some time. He wanted to have a look around the place. He edged past the crowd, past a column into a dimly lit hallway, closed off by a door at the end. He walked quickly down the hall, passed a ladies’ room, then came to a men’s room. Inside, there were four urinals and two stalls. Alo
ng the opposite wall was a counter with four sinks. It was expensively decorated and as dimly lit as the hallway. Cat left the men’s room and stepped back into the hall. At the end, to his left, was a pair of swinging doors leading to a kitchen. A couple of staff members in white uniforms were working there.
He opened the door at the end of the hall, looked into the darkened room, and found a light switch. It was a large pantry, well stocked with canned food and staples. He stepped into the room. Against the opposite wall, next to sacks of potatoes and onions, were two identical barrels, one newly opened and filled with dried beans, the other with only an inch or two of beans at the bottom. He switched off the light, left the pantry, and returned to the main room of the disco.
The show was continuing, but the participants had changed. Now there were two girls, both Anglo-looking, and one enormously built young Latino. The crowd had lost none of its interest. Cat looked and found his man standing as before, but now looking bored. Suddenly, he turned and picked his way through the cheering crowd, toward the hallway. Cat moved sideways to the column and watched as he walked toward the men’s room. Cat glanced at the crowd again to make sure no one else had followed, but they were rapt. This is too lucky, Cat thought. Something has to go wrong. He found he was breathing rapidly.
He walked quickly down the hall toward the men’s room, glancing over his shoulder, and went in. Denny was standing at a urinal. Cat went to a sink and began to wash his hands. The music was still loud, even in here. Trembling, he splashed some water on his face. This moment that he had been afraid to hope for had come.
“Quite a show, huh?” Denny said loudly.
Cat jumped. He hadn’t expected him to speak. “Yeah.”
Denny zipped up his trousers and came to the sink next to Cat. He turned on the water and began to wash his hands. “Yeah, I picked those girls out myself.” He sounded drunk. “Every one of them. The Anaconda doesn’t like Latino girls, you know. Just Anglos, and they’ve gotta be classy-looking and young. I keep him supplied.” He bent low over the sink, splashed some water on his face, and rubbed vigorously.
Cat stepped back from the sink, turned toward Denny, and, with all the force he could muster, lifted a foot and drove his heel into the base of the younger man’s spine. Denny’s scream was partly muffled by his mouth hitting the faucet over the sink, but with the din in the disco, no one would ever have heard him. He collapsed onto his back, still screaming, spitting blood and teeth.
Cat pulled the H&K automatic from its shoulder holster.
Denny’s face had shaped itself into a mask of disbelief. He suddenly stopped screaming. “You motherfucker!” he spat at his tormentor. “I can’t feel nothing in . . . shit, I can’t move my legs!”
Cat made a show of removing the clip from the pistol, inspecting it, then shoving it back into the handle. “That’s because you’re a paraplegic now.”
“Who the hell are you?” Denny gabbled. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Cat took the silencer from his pocket and began screwing it into the pistol’s barrel. “You’ve got a short memory, Denny,” he said. “We met a few months ago—back when I owned a little yacht called Catbird, back when I had a wife and a daughter. I gave you a lift to Panama, remember? Of course we never made it . . .”
Denny’s face collapsed into a paradigm of fear, and he began trying to pull himself across the floor with his hands, dragging his useless legs behind him.
Cat grabbed him by the collar, dragged him back, and propped him up in a corner. “Don’t leave me, Denny. You left me last time, when you thought you’d killed me with my own shotgun, after you’d murdered my wife and that girl. Who was she, anyway? Why did you kill her and leave her there?”
Denny stared at him speechlessly.
Cat brought the silencer sharply aross the bridge of his nose, breaking it. Blood spurted over Denny’s shirt. “Tell me about it, or I’ll keep hurting you,” Cat said.
“She was Pedro’s old lady,” Denny blubbered, now incredibly anxious to please. “He was sick of her, and he thought it seemed like a good time to unload her. She’d been threatening to go to the cops about the coke he’d been dealing.”
“Well, that was real clear thinking, wasn’t it? Just blow her head half off, and leave her to sink with me, my wife, and Catbird.” Cat grabbed him by the hair and banged his head against the wall. “What did you do to Jinx? Why won’t she speak anything but Spanish?”
Denny cried out and grabbed his head with both hands. “I didn’t do anything to her, I swear to God. I didn’t even screw her! The Anaconda wanted ’em fresh! But she wouldn’t talk at all, wouldn’t even answer to her name. Me and Pedro got her to Cartagena, and she was just curled up like a baby in the back of the boat all the way. She refused to speak for weeks. The Anaconda had this woman looking after her all the time; she just kept talking to her in Spanish. And finally, when she started to come around, she wouldn’t speak anything but Spanish. I swear to God, I didn’t do nothing to her!”
“No,” Cat said, pointing the pistol at Denny, “nothing but murder her parents and leave them on a sinking boat, and sell her to a sadistic maniac who—” Cat stopped himself from thinking what Prince could have done to Jinx that made her want to separate herself from her identity, to the point where she refused even to speak her own language. “You slimy little bastard,” Cat said quietly to Denny. He worked the action of the pistol, pumping a round into the chamber.
“Oh, Jesus,” Denny whimpered, “please don’t . . . oh, Jesus.”
“It’s a little late for you and Jesus, Denny,” Cat said quietly. “Tonight, you sleep in hell.” Cat waited a moment for that to sink into Denny’s brain, then he followed it with a single shot to the forehead. The pistol made a noise like a hand slapping the side of a leather suitcase. Denny made a little sighing sound, and his head slumped to the right. Cat shot him again in the temple.
Cat stared at the corpse for just a moment, then walked quickly to the door and looked up and down the hallway. The merriment was continuing in the disco, and the hall was empty. Cat went back and grabbed Denny’s body by a wrist, pulled it away from the wall, and got it up and slung onto his hip. Walking in a half-crouch, he peered into the hallway, then carried the body quickly to the pantry. Inside, he got the light on, then carried Denny to the nearly empty bean barrel. With some effort, he got the body into the barrel, feet first, and forced it into something like the fetal position. Then he rolled the barrel out a few feet, rolled the full barrel into its place, then rolled Denny’s barrel to where the full barrel had been. He took a large scoop from he shelf above the barrels and began shoveling dried beans from the full barrel into the barrel containing the corpse. Soon, Denny’s barrel was full to the brim, and the corpse had disappeared under the beans.
Cat switched off the light and stepped back into the hallway. Nothing had changed. He went back to the men’s room, took some paper towels, and wiped the blood from the tiled wall. Then he rolled a waste container from under the sink and placed it on the spot where the carpet was bloody.
He stood back and surveyed the scene. With a little luck, nobody would know for a while that a man had been murdered here. Not, at least, until somebody ate a lot more beans. Cat walked past the cheering crowd and left the building, mopping the sweat from his face and neck. He loosened his collar and started toward the cottage. He had just killed a man, and he wondered why he didn’t feel terrible about it. He didn’t feel elated; he hadn’t actually enjoyed shooting Denny, but still he had the feeling of satisfaction that comes when something important has been accomplished.
He didn’t feel finished, though. There was another task to complete: Prince. Before dawn that morning, he would turn on Barry Hedger’s marvelous little radio, and an hour or two later the skies would rain helicopters and troops. By that time, he would be barricaded into Prince’s apartment with Jinx, Meg, and Dell. By that time, Prince would be dead. Cat wondered if he could find a slower way to accomplish that t
han he had with Denny.
He reached the cottage and went inside. To his surprise, Meg was not asleep; she was sitting in a chair in the living room, and every light in the place was on. She looked very odd. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“When I came home, the place had been ransacked,” she said. “It doesn’t look it, but it has been very carefully ransacked.”
Cat looked around the room. It seemed perfectly normal to him. “Was anything taken?” he asked. “Did they take your camera or tapes?”
Meg shook her head. “I think I must have surprised him. The bedroom window was open. Only two things are missing, as far as I can tell.”
“What two things?”
“Well, he found the false bottom in your bag; Bluey’s pistol is gone.”
“What else?”
Meg sighed. “Barry Hedger’s radio,” she said.
32
THE QUESTION IS, WHO TOOK IT? “MEG SAID.
“It doesn’t much matter who took it,” Cat replied. “Without it, we’re fucked. There’s no way to call in the raid.”
“Sure, that’s plain enough, but it matters a hell of a lot who took it. I mean, if it was just a simple burglary, that’s one thing. If Prince had the cottage searched, that’s quite another.”
She had a point. “You’re right. If Prince finds out what that radio is, we’re dead. We’ve got to report it stolen.”
“Isn’t that just going to attract a lot of attention?”
“Sure, but if we report it, and if it was a burglary, then we have some chance of getting it back without Prince’s finding out what it is. On the other hand, if Prince had the place searched, then it can’t hurt to report it, since he already knows. It might look bad if we didn’t. There’s always the chance that he’s got it and doesn’t know what it is.”
“Okay,” Meg said, “we report it and see what happens. Anyway, I think this is a straight burglary; one of the staff, maybe.”
“I hope you’re right, but even if it is, unless we can get the radio back—”