Big Kiss-Off

by Keene, Day

  Moran slapped her. “Shut up. No. I can’t see.”

  “You can’t see what?”

  “Why I should let you and Tocko make a chump out of me. Why I should take the short end of the deal. I figured this thing out. I made the original contacts. I arranged for the advance. What Cain says makes sense to me.” Moran looked at the men milling restlessly around the big table. “What do you think, fellows?”

  The silence broke as the men voiced their views. Tocko shouted, in vain, to be heard. The men moved up in arguing knots.

  Tocko struck one in the face. “Shut up and keep out of this or you’ll wind up on a mud lump.” He resumed his effort to be heard. “Men. Listen to me — ”

  Cade hit the window screen hard. For a sickening moment he thought the copper wire was going to hold, then his body catapulted into space. The dry sand under the window seemed to rise to meet him.

  Behind him he heard Janice scream. The flat slap of a fired pistol followed. A second, a third, a fourth report followed the first shot.

  His nerves tensed against the expected impact of the bullets, Cade zigzagged desperately, but there was no familiar pacing whine of lead as he ran on.

  The moon had risen. He was a perfect target, but whoever had fired the pistol hadn’t been shooting at him.

  The radio shack was the last in the row of separate cottages. Cade paused in the shadow of the tower to pant for breath. The lack of pursuit worried him. Tocko couldn’t permit him to live. Even Moran’s men, realizing they had been tricked, should be boiling out of the window by now.

  Through the lighted windows he could see figures moving around in the lodge but the wind whipped away their voices before they could reach him. The only sounds were the slap of the water on the beach, the thud thud of the power plant and the chirp and thunking of the night things in the swamp.

  Cade rounded the radio shack cautiously. There was a small angle iron leaning against one of the concrete piers. It wasn’t much of a weapon. It was something. Cade picked it up and turned the knob of the closed door. The door seemed to be unlocked. Cade gripped the angle iron and walked in.

  His upturned white monkey hat cocked low over one eye a gum-chewing youth in blue dungarees and white skivy was covering the radio operator with a .45 caliber service automatic. He included Cade in the coverage.

  “Come in,” the youth said. “Who are you?”

  17 The Scattered Scum

  A bead of sweat dripped from Cade’s nose to plop inaudibly on the floor of the shack. After all he had been through, this was an anti-climax. He knew who the youth was, at least whom he represented. He’d seen similar gum chewing youths in blue dungarees and web gun belts before — a lot of them.

  The youth noticed the iron. “Put it down, fellow.”

  Cade put the angle iron down carefully.

  “Okay. Now I ast you a question.”

  “My name is Cain,” Cade told him.

  “The former Air Force colonel who’s been kiting all over the Delta with that skirt from Venezuela?”

  “Anyway my name is Cain.”

  The youth was still skeptical. “I betcha. You don’t look like no colonel to me. Anyway, we can find out. The lieutenant says he is acquainted with you personal.”

  A second youth stuck his head in the doorway. “You have any trouble with the sparks, Chuck?”

  “Naw,” Chuck said scornfully. He looked at the sallow-faced radio operator. “I point the thing at him and he almost heaves his Hershey bars.”

  “Who’s the other guy?”

  “He says his name is Cain. You’d better take him up to the lodge and let the lieutenant look him over.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “You guys have any trouble?”

  The second youth grinned. “Naw. They were so busy fighting among themselves they didn’t even know we were there until the lieutenant blew his whistle.” He covered Cain with the gun in his hand. “Let’s take a walk, fellow. And don’t give me no trouble.”

  As a precaution against the seaman’s youth, Cade held his palms shoulder high as he waded the loose sand along the beach. There was no big boat made fast to the T of the pier. “Where’s the cutter?” he asked.

  “We didn’t come in a cutter,” the seaman said. “We came down fast, in a crash boat. And just so you guys wouldn’t scatter we heaved-to around the next bend and walked down along the beach.”

  “I see,” Cade said. He wished his knees would stiffen. He felt as if he were walking on rubber legs.

  The cypress-paneled lobby was filled with men, most with their hands in the air. An alert and armed Coast Guardsman was posted at every exit. As Cade and the youth guarding him entered the room a grizzled chief whose bare arms boasted a colorful gallery of anchors and entwined hearts and lush beauties in scant bathing suits looked up from the collection of pistols and knives and revolvers he was making.

  “Who you got there, Hanson?”

  “Chuck says he told him his name is Cain.”

  The Coast Guard lieutenant who was questioning Moran turned and grinned at Cade. “Hi, Colonel. Remember me?”

  Cade couldn’t be certain after the years but the lieutenant looked like one of the Mitrovica boys of the family which had changed its name to Morton. He had the same friendly white-toothed smile. “You wouldn’t be Skip Morton, would you?”

  Lieutenant Morton was pleased. “You do remember me. And I was just a squirt when you went away.” He offered his hand. “Glad to see you, man. I’m glad you’re back in Bay Parish. Welcome home.”

  Cade shook hands, wondering how long his knees would continue to hold him. He felt as he had on his first night back in Bay Parish, suddenly humble and shy. The lieutenant meant what he said, just as Miss Spence and old man Dobraviche and Mamma Salvatore and all the others had meant it.

  Some strength returned to his knees as he accepted a cigarette from the package Morton offered him. “And am I glad to see you. But how come the raid right now. Who tipped you?”

  Lieutenant Morton grinned. “Who didn’t? We’ve been keeping our eyes on this place and laying for both Tocko and Moran for a long time, see? Then about fifteen hundred this afternoon the tips began to pour in. Mamma Salvatore was worried because you’d come down to the Bay and hadn’t shown up again. Immigration was raising hell because you were supposed to have a girl stowaway on your boat. About the same time the crashed ’copter pilot the boys on the cutter fished out of the drink this morning loosened up enough to tell how he got all the bullet holes in his plane.”

  Lieutenant Morton continued. “It wasn’t any one thing.” He nodded at a small knot of men still huddled together in one corner of the lodge. “Then there were our alien friends there. We’ve had undercover agents in Havana tailing them for quite some time, waiting for them to make a break. We knew they’d made a contact. We suspected it was with one of Tocko’s captains and when they disappeared last night an all-out alert was sounded.” Lieutenant Morton’s grin grew even more expansive. “Then just to make it official one of the seamen off a converted cutter one of the big oil companies is using to smell around these waters got drunk in a Royal Street bar. He sounded off about a big gun fight that had taken place between Moran and Kalavitch’s boys down here last A.M. So the brass put it all together, I got the nod — and here we are.”

  The chief dumped his assortment of confiscated weapons on one of the tables. “All clear, sir.”

  “Good,” Morton said crisply. “Now you and Jack go back and get the boat and bring it down to the pier.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “As soon as you make fast we’ll start loading.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Moran’s voice was bitter as he suddenly spoke up. “Sure. You’ll tell the truth, Cain. You’ll swear it in any court. The hell of it is, from what the lieutenant tells me, some pair of punks in Bay Parish saw me shoot Joe Laval. I’d have done better to have strung along with Tocko.” Moran’s mouth twitched in a nervous tic. “Well, no, no
t exactly.”

  Cade tried to hate the man. He couldn’t. He felt drained of all emotion. He didn’t hate anyone. All he wanted to do was rest. He looked for Mimi and found her sitting with her bare feet curled under her in one of the oversized leather chairs. Cade sat on the arm of the chair. “You’re all right? You weren’t hurt?”

  Mimi shook her head. “No. Just frightened. That was all.”

  Her voice sounded strained. It was almost as if they were strangers.

  Cade glanced around the room. “Where’s Tocko?”

  “Dead,” Lieutenant Morton told him. He nodded at one of the men. “As I get it, Kalavitch slapped that man and got four slugs in his guts just as we came in the door.” Morton shook his head. “Tocko made a mistake when he tried to climb into the big time as far as aliens are concerned.”

  Two seamen came out of the dining room carrying a canvas-wrapped bundle between them.

  “Take him out on the pier,” Lieutenant Morton ordered. “The chief’s gone to get the boat.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Lieutenant Morton snuffed his cigarette in one of the clam shells serving as ash trays. “Do you notice anyone else missing, Colonel?”

  Cade looked at the faces in the lobby. “My former wife.”

  “That would be the blonde who went out the window on your heels.”

  “And the Squid.”

  “I forgot the pinhead,” Lieutenant Morton admitted. He nodded to the seamen guarding the prisoners. “All right. Let’s take them down to the pier, boys.”

  Morton opened the front screen door to permit the men to file through. As he did, somewhere out on the moonlit bay a balky motor coughed as if reluctant to start. “How many cruisers were there in the slips, Cade?” Morton asked.

  “Three,” Cade told him. “And mine.”

  “One of them is gone,” Morton said. He swore softly. “Of course. The girl and the Squid. They must have cut loose and let the wind and the tide drift them out into the Bay.”

  The balky motor caught and turned over. There was the throb of an underwater exhaust. Cade joined Morton on the front steps of the lodge. A quarter-mile out in the Bay one of the three fishing boats were silhouetted briefly against the moon. Cade glimpsed, or thought he glimpsed, Janice’s wheat-colored hair, then a huge bulk intervened.

  One of the seamen asked, “Shall we try to get them, Lieutenant?”

  Lieutenant Morton shook his head. “No. Let them go for now. Neither are very important. We’ll put out a pickup on them, but I doubt if they’ll get very far in that tub. If they do manage to get through the pass they’ll probably hang up on one of the lumps.”

  Cade watched the fishing boat blend with the moonlight. His stomach felt slightly queasy. It was, he thought, ironic that Janice, whose specialty had been giving pleasure for gain, should escape with the Squid. Of all people. He hoped they had fun.

  As the last of the men filed past him, Morton asked, “Now about this other girl, Colonel?”

  “You mean Miss Esterpar?”

  “If that’s the name of the girl who jumped ship.”

  Cade looked at Mimi. She hadn’t moved. She was still sitting white-faced and frightened in the big leather chair. “What about her?”

  “Well, Immigration has alerted us to pick her up.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The usual, I imagine. There’ll be a hearing. Then they’ll hold her for deportation.”

  “They’ll send her back to Caracas.”

  “If that’s where she came from.”

  “What if she can’t go back? What if her family won’t receive her?”

  “Immigration isn’t concerned with that.”

  “No,” Cade said, “I don’t suppose so.” He tried to imagine what it would be like without Mimi and his imagination wouldn’t stretch that far. He asked, “What if she was to marry an American citizen?”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  The situation was new to the lieutenant. “There you have me. I never came up against one quite like this before.”

  “I’ll marry her in Grand Isle, now, tonight, in the morning, whenever we can find a priest.”

  Lieutenant Morton was dubious. “Now, look. I don’t know about this, Cade. My orders are to pick her up.”

  Cade continued earnestly. “I’ll be responsible for her appearance at any hearing that may be held. I’ll sell my boat for whatever I can get and post bond if necessary.”

  “You must think a lot of her.”

  “Let’s say I’m sorry for her.”

  “And you’ll bring her to Bay Parish as soon as possible?”

  “On my word of honor.”

  Morton watched the nose of the crash boat round the point of land above the pier and mentally computed the meager deck and cabin space aboard the boat.

  “Well, in that case,” he said. “I suppose it will do until we can get a ruling from Immigration. We’re going to be pretty full up going back and I hate to crowd a nice kid — and she must be nice if you feel the way you do about her — in with the scum we’re carrying.”

  18 Come and Get It

  The day as a wedding day, left much to be desired. Morning was hot, as only the Delta can be hot. Then there was the matter of the priest. The priest in Grand Isle was visiting a colleague in Golden Meadow and Cade had been forced to rent a car to drive the thirty-one rutted miles separating the two towns. En route he’d had a puncture and a blow-out. Then when they had reached Golden Meadow there had been the matter of a license and the aged priest’s natural reluctance to marry a couple dressed as they were dressed.

  Despite the fact they were of a size, Mimi had flatly refused to wear any of the dozens of dresses Janice had left behind her. Nor had she been willing to move from the chair until dawn. She’d sat most of the night crying softly while Cade, his feeling of trying to climb a glass wall returned, had drunk too much rum.

  Now, with night falling again, Cade still had a sour taste in his mouth. He sat in the dinghy on the shore of the small bayou in which he’d anchored the Sea Bird, trying to catch fish he didn’t want, wishing despite the lateness of the hour that when he had concluded his business in Golden Meadow and Grand Isle he had pushed on for Bay Parish. At least Mamma Salvatore and Miss Spence and old man Dobraviche liked him. There would have been music and lights in Sal’s and endless bottles of chilled orange wine.

  Cade was bitter. He was no better off emotionally or financially than he had been when he’d first returned. He was still hungry and his hunger wasn’t for food. He wanted love, friendship, tenderness, all the things he’d gone without during his time north of the Yalung.

  With Tocko dead and Janice gone and his property recorded in Tocko’s name, not forgetting the advance against possible royalties the oil company had made to Moran, the situation was typical Army. His property was so fouled up it would take seven chicken colonels from the Provost Marshal General’s office and the same number from the C.I.D. to unscramble it. When the various lawyers were finished fighting it would probably turn out that Jean LaFitte still owned the land.

  “Rest and quiet,” the medic had told him. “Buy a boat.”

  Cade scowled through the purple shadows settling on the bayou at the ugly scar plainly visible on the rail of the Sea Bird. Mimi was supposed to be cooking supper. Not that he was hungry. He and Mimi had eaten in Grand Isle and also in Golden Meadow. Once the fatherly old priest had gotten over the shock of marrying a bare-footed couple, the man with assorted bruises and a black eye and the girl dressed in a pair of much too tight men’s pants and shirt, he had insisted he and Mimi stay for lunch. He had even wished them numerous progeny. And that was a laugh. A real laugh!

  Cade jerked the bait from the mouth of an eager two-pound grunt that was attempting to hook itself and pulled in his line wondering if Mimi held Janice against him, wondering just why she had agreed to marry him.

  To stay in the country? It seemed the most logical reason. Was it that imp
ortant to her? Was it the only reason?

  With the deepening dusk the mosquitoes droned out of the marshes. Cade was relieved when he heard a jangling of ship’s bells from the Sea Bird. He rode toward it slowly. His position hadn’t changed. He still felt the same way about Mimi that he had when he had found her almost nude and dripping in the cabin of the Sea Bird. Mimi was a nice kid. She was people. She had guts. Anything that eventuated, if anything ever did, would have to originate with her.

  She was leaning with her arms on the scarred rail of the cruiser. Her eyes were still slightly slitted and sullen. As Cade started to make fast, she said, “Could I ask you some questions before you come aboard?”

  Cade looked up at her, puzzled. “Ask away.”

  “Why did you marry me?”

  “That’s a hell of a question.”

  “I have to know. Was it because you feel sorry for me? Because I would have to go back to Caracas?”

  Cade started to say “partly” and thought better of it. He sat in the bobbing dinghy looking up at her. Why had he married Mimi?

  Still leaning on her elbows, Mimi asked, “Was it just because I am a woman! Because I am young? Because I have the pretty body?”

  The cool and deep peace of early evening spread slowly over the bayou. The night wind began to blow. Cade looked from Mimi to a great white heron winging its way through the deepening dusk back to its nest and all of his bitterness left him. It was good just to be home. He knew why he had married Mimi.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. That is, not entirely.”

  “Then why did you marry me?”

  Cade told her. “Because you’re the girl I thought I was marrying when I married Janice. Because I love you.”

  Cade realized, shocked, it was the first time he’d told Mimi he loved her.

  Her eyes no longer slitted and sullen but big and black and luminous, Mimi smiled down at him. “Then, how you say, come an’ get it.” She added softly. “This you not ’ave to ask how to say. I love you, too.”

  Her face disappeared from the rail. Cade made the dinghy fast. Of course. Every woman had a right to know she was loved. He pulled himself over the side of the cruiser into the cockpit.