by Peter Rabe
It didn’t worry Charley, because first the kid had to get close. He had to get up on his feet, half in a crouch, and then get Charley in a corner. Charley was going to let him come and counted on the fact that the kid wasn’t apt to make a sudden move, not with the pain freezing his muscles. It was good figuring, but suddenly the door flew open close behind him, the cold sea air raked over the back of his head, and Charley whirled around. There was nothing; the door had flown open and the guy at the wheel was still at the wheel. And the kid was all over him.
The first slash tore his coat the whole length of the back; the second one came close to taking off his ear. But now the kid was much too close, which is no good with a knife and a busted kidney. This time the kid screamed good and loud; his legs gave way when Charley punched him where the ribs come close together, and that’s when Charley had the knife. He had the knife, he held the sagging kid in front of him, and that’s how he was looking straight at the guy who was in the door now.
He must have lashed the wheel, because the yawl kept on course, and so did the guy in the door. His pencil mustache seemed to stretch from ear to ear, his teeth showed big and white, and his hands were big. One was a fist, the other held a stick.
“One more step, angel face, and your friend gets the shaft.” Charley showed how, holding the knife point close under the kid’s jaw.
Angel face came closer.
“Like this,” said Charley and started the knife.
It panicked the kid even though he was practically out and Charley had a time holding him. But angel face only came closer. He’d come closer whether the kid was dead or alive; one more step and the club would come up and then down, hitting the kid or Charley, not caring who got it first.
Throwing the knife would do. Charley kept holding the kid, almost all dead weight now, and tested the arc. He’d throw underhand, right past the kid’s side and going up as long as there was still room, as soon as the club came, if the guy meant to lift it. He did. He hauled out, reaching high, the way a tennis player gets set for a serve. The knife made only half a turn, that’s how close they were, and then Charley saw where it dug into the muscle, under the guy’s arm. He was blue in the face but meant to finish the swing, which came down in a crazy sweep, not very accurate, but so hard that it made a dull, no-bounce crack on the kid’s head when Charley pushed free. The kid clattered down, and then the other one. He hadn’t started to howl yet, only the club had dropped from his hand. He started to reach for the knife when Charley jumped over both of them, and while he was going up the steps the screaming started. Charley kept going.
He went for the wheel, unhooked it, then lashed it again so the yawl started circling with the motor launch on the outside of the curve. Charley’s hands were fluttery when he untied the lines on his boat. He kept listening for a sound from the steps, knowing that at least one of the two down there was able to walk, if he tried hard enough. Charley tied the bowline again and went downstairs. The kid was out, but angel face sat on the floor, sweating, trying to get up enough nerve to pull out the knife. The drug carton was in the left bunk and Charley wanted it. He stepped a little closer to the guy with the knife under his arm and kicked him in the head. The guy lay down quietly and Charley got his box.
But the kick had done the wrong thing. Charley was halfway up the stairs when the guy scrambled up, mad as a bull, yanked the knife out, and fell down again. Nobody pulls a knife out of his own meat without getting faint, and Charley heard the man fall. He barely looked back, held his box tight, and dashed for the gunwale. He unlashed the bowline and jumped into the launch.
He should have taken more time. When the motor kicked over and the launch started to draw away, Charley didn’t notice at first how the bowline re-tied itself. But the launch made a sudden jolt, veered hard, and slammed back into the side of the yawl. It couldn’t have happened better for the guy with the mustache, because now the launch was in close, and Charley was throwing the clutch while the guy jumped. If he hadn’t been roaring to give himself strength he might have got there faster. He might have landed flatfooted instead of catching Charley’s punch while in midair, adding his own weight to the thrust, and his jump turning into a thud.
They rolled from one side of the launch to the other while one of them kept roaring and the other grunted with the sheer effort of trying to kill. Then Charley caught himself in time. It couldn’t have been worse, after all the preparing and making the maneuver look normal to the old man who watched the Capri harbor. He would remember the yawl waiting there for repairs and Charley coming late at night with engine replacements, and then the next thing the yawl circling aimlessly under the Capri cliffs, running into the rocks, maybe, with the motor intact, the engine replacements still in their box on the cabin floor, a dead man aboard and the other one almost dead.
“Can you hear me?” said Charley and shook the man by the throat. “Can you hear?”
He did. He cursed fluently, as if his tongue wasn’t cut, his lips were normal size, and as if he didn’t know he had almost been dead.
“Listen. I’m putting you back aboard. I’m hoisting your sail and then I watch you taking her around the island and back to the coast. You hear?”
“I hear.”
“Keep going till you make port, the same place where you left. And tell Bantam you delivered the way you were supposed to.”
Charley brought the launch close and held on to the side of the sailboat while he watched the man crawl up. He switched off the motor, turned into the wind and got the mainsail up. Then he cast off, making sure it was right this time.
“Keep your split nose close to the wind, Captain Kidd,” he yelled, but the guy didn’t get it.
Charley watched the yawl heel and take a close, steady course. He was sure the guy at the wheel was a Sardinian. They can handle a ship when they’re half dead.
Chapter 23
She had to close her eyes when the sun came over the hill, because the sharp light glinted through the leaves outside the window and made a splash on the pillow. She turned slowly and faced the wall. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was flattened in back where she had been lying on it. But the wall was too close. The whitewash had grains and cracks which hurt her eyes. Then she got up. She sat on the bed for a while and looked at her hands. They curled as if they were trying to sleep.
She would have to tell Charley. That’s what all this was about — Charley alive and coming back. Nothing else really mattered.
When she stood in the kitchen she saw the gun on the table, but she was looking for a glass. She found a glass, drew water at the sink, and drank. She put the glass down and saw the gun again. She picked it up and almost laughed. Then she let it drop on a chair. She should wash, perhaps; she should comb her hair and change. The weeds rustled outside the window and she looked out to see if it was the wind. It was the wind. She filled the glass again and drank a little more water.
It was a good thing she hadn’t heard anything sooner, because this way the door opened, he walked in, and she never had time to make a mistake and think it was Charley. Joe closed the door again and nodded at her.
“You look a mess,” he said.
She finished drinking water.
“You better leave,” she said. “He will be back soon.”
He grinned but didn’t say anything right away. He saw that she believed what she had said.
“He isn’t going to like your looking messy like that. Aren’t you changing or something?”
She ran water into a pan and took soap. “I want you to leave now,” she said. “I’m going to wash.”
“What’s the matter? We don’t know each other good enough?”
“Of course we do.” She found a cigarette, lit it. She thought she would smoke that first and by then he would leave. “Watching me wash won’t make you know me any better,” she said.
Joe sat down at the table.
“You’re a cold one,” he said. “To look at you I never figured you’d
take a lot of stoking.”
She came around to his side of the table and half sat on top of it.
“Joe,” she said. “Go away, will you?”
“Afraid I’m going to rape you?”
She exhaled smoke and got up.
“You know you can’t rape me,” she said and went back to the sink.
He didn’t know which way she meant that and Martha didn’t seem to care whether he did or not. It made him feel mean. He remembered why he had come and now he was going to do it.
“I was going to tell you about Charley,” he said and watched her turn around slowly. “He’s okay,” he said; “he’ll be back.” He grinned at her and waited for her to show some expression. “He’ll be back,” he said again, “but not today.”
“When?”
“I was down at the phone,” he said. “They got me out of bed to answer it. He called from Capri saying he’s on his way to Amalfi on business, and would come back tomorrow noon.” When she made no move of any sort he kept talking. “You see? He’s safe all this time, he’s never even been out of the bay, and tomorrow he’ll be back. I kept my end of the bargain.”
“I am glad for you,” she said.
“So how about keeping yours?”
This time she did show expression. She frowned at him and folded her arms.
“What did you say?”
“Your end of the bargain.”
“Joe — ” and when she laughed Joe had to look at her to tell what the sound meant — “don’t you remember? Last night, Joe. You had your bargain on the table.”
“That was no bargain,” he said.
“At your price, you can expect no more.”
“Christ,” he said, but then he started to grin again.
“Look, Martha, he won’t be back till tomorrow.”
“Time to wash off the filth.”
“Talk tough if you want. But a bargain’s a bargain.”
“I have kept mine.”
“Like hell. I forced you.”
If she hadn’t been so surprised she might have laughed again, the way she had done before.
“You know,” he said, “you got to do it right There’s a difference.”
“Not with you,” she said.
“Look. Don’t put on. If there’s one thing I know, kid — ”
“ — it is women,” she finished for him and killed the cigarette in a drop of water that hung from the faucet.
“I was going to say hoors,” he said, but she wasn’t paying attention. She watched the wetness soak into the dead stub in her hand and felt very tired. He would keep talking for hours. He might go away and come back later, because he never rushed. Like a slow disease he would stay and stay, never violent but never gone — she would have to tell Charley, or the disease could hang on till the end.
“So?” He sat and waited.
“Joe. Go away.”
He took a breath and sounded different.
“I was gonna be nice about it. What’s the harm? But remember this, kid — I still got time, same as yesterday, and maybe he won’t come back tomorrow.”
“You swine! You wouldn’t — ” But the sudden anger never quite made it and she let it die. Of course he would, he would do the same thing twice, three times, as many times as Charley wasn’t there and until he came back. She looked at him so even Joe felt the disgust.
“You wanna try and find out if I’m bluffing?”
She only lowered her eyes.
“That’s the spirit. What the hell?” He got up. “What’s it to you, after yesterday.”
She even thought he might be right. She was so tired, feeling so dull, she hardly bothered to think at all. “In style,” he said. “Get into bed.”
She walked into the next room and undressed automatically; shoes, skirt, blouse. Afterwards she lay there and didn’t care about covering herself. She heard him go into the kitchen, work the pump. She heard the way he drank.
“Hey, kid,” he called. “Get up. Put some clothes on.”
She didn’t.
“Cone on. I don’t like my women to walk around naked outdoors.” She sat up because she didn’t understand.
“Adele’s gone. Yesterday, already. Fanny’ll show you where to put your things.”
For the first time since the night before she felt herself coming alive, like under a whip.
“Now,” he said. “Or maybe you think I’m going to walk back and forth through these weeds every time?”
“What are you saying?”
“You’re moving in, I’m saying.”
“What are you saying, Joe?”
She walked towards him, straight, and the sight made him feel vicious. “Stop the clowning, huh? You think you’re so good you can come around here and — ”
“Answer me!”
“I’ll give you an answer, you bitch! From now on you do as you’re told, you hold still, and you quit crapping around with your lousy moods. You’re moving in, so you learn to act like Fanny, and fast. Or you got an idea Charley’s gonna set it all your way again, sister? Wake up. He’s been fish bait since midnight!”
“You lie!”
“Come here!” he yelled, and swatted one hand at her.
He thought she was stooping to avoid his hand, and she thought he might follow up and step closer, so she reached the chair fast. Charley had said the closer the better. She fired.
The gun made a jolt, something she hadn’t known about, but then Joe started to swivel, and when his head hit the sink Martha’s thought was that the pain would make him more angry.
When she saw the blood soak up where the belt came around his waist it caught up with her. She gasped, then she suddenly screamed. She screamed with the pressure of all that had gone wrong and all that could never be right.
She put her hands around herself because she felt naked. It was the only thing that didn’t confuse her, so she went into the other room and put on her clothes. Then she walked out through the kitchen where the gun was on the floor, and where Joe was. He could almost reach it. She didn’t see that he tried because she was only thinking of what didn’t confuse her. The simplest thing was to walk, so she walked through the weeds and down the thirteen steps one way and twelve the other.
Chapter 24
Charley Delmont held the wheel with the left hand because it hurt his knuckles to hold on with the right one. It made him drive the Bugatti in jerks, because when the streets got narrower and twisted through Pizzofalcone he wouldn’t slow down. Then he saw the carabinièri come down the sidewalk. There was never one, they always walked in twosomes. Charley slowed down when he saw them. It was a habit.
He held himself back all the way up the hill and through the outskirts where the osteria was, but when he pulled into the yard the back wheels skidded and dug two black lines into the dirt. He bucked it to a stop and jumped out. He didn’t forget to carry the carton into the basement. He came back at a jog and kept it up all the way to the stairs. He stopped to look at them for a second, patted his side where the knife was, and went up.
He met no one. And the kitchen was empty.
The main thing now was to keep his head. The main thing was to fix that bastard for good but not altogether, not before they had their talk.
He had the knife out and kicked open the door. He waited for Francesca to turn around. She had been folding shirts on the dresser and didn’t know about Joe, but he ought to be back by now He hadn’t even taken his glass of milk in the morning.
Charley went back to the kitchen and looked at the glass of milk on the table. He squinted into the bright sun outside, across the weeds. They moved, but it wasn’t the wind.
Charley almost fell over Joe, crawling there like a dog, his face a bad color and the shirt all stained. He ran across to his house, with the knife still in his hand. The house was empty, but the gun made him sure. One shot, just the way he would have done it — but it couldn’t have been very close because the bleeding pig was still alive. One shot to sca
re him off, and hitting him into the bargain. She must have been scared and ran.
Thinking of Joe he started to curse all the way back through the weeds. He’d saved his temper all the way over from Capri, and now there was nothing he could do with it. He watched Joe crawl through the grass, and watching him made Charley break out in a sweat. It ran down his back and itched in his palms, but Charley walked very slowly because Joe was setting a slow pace. Charley followed him into the kitchen still holding the knife.
Joe pulled himself up by the table and looked beat. The two men looked at each other and Joe was licking his lips.
“Chuck. I’m hit.”
“Don’t talk. Just get better fast, you sonofabitch. I’ll be waiting.”
Francesca had rushed over. She held one of Joe’s arms but didn’t know what to do.
“My side, Chuck, I think it’s still in there. Chuck — ” Charley put the knife away and started to smile.
“To do it up brown you ought to come up the stairs first. You should — ”
“Chuck, dammit, I still got the slug. Take it out before the thing starts rotting on me.”
“Joe, I wouldn’t want to miss it. Get on the table.”
Joe stretched out. The tip of his nose looked white, and his eyes had the wide-open meanness of a weasel. Charley came back with the box of instruments and the medicinal bottles.
“Take off his pants, Fanny.”
She did and looked at the wound. There was a hole in front and a gash in back, clean path through the meat over his hip.
“Let me tell you,” said Charley, “I’m disappointed. It came out whole.”
Joe just cursed under his breath.
“I’ll clean it out,” said Charley and poured alcohol into a dish. He washed his hands in it and poured the stuff out. Then he filled the dish again.
“Want a shot?”
“Yeah. Gimme.”