“Where you found the first blue pearl,” Julia had to say as though it were a memory they shared. On swift second thought she added, “I assume.”
William went on, got to the ghastly part, the murders by Bertin.
Julia shuddered, hugged herself. “Tell me more about this ugly fellow,” she prompted.
“You know him,” William said levelly. “Bertin is Lesage.”
It puzzled Julia that she didn’t even for a moment consider William might be mistaken. She merely accepted his contention, and continued to listen as William revealed how he’d recognized the dah-she knife in Lesage’s study, kept by Lesage as a grisly memento—how from that certain incrimination he’d been able to undo Lesage’s rearranged face and identify him as Bertin.
Throughout the telling William had frequently paused and looked to Julia as though she could verify his every word. Indeed, her involuntary nods were concurring testimony. She’d been especially stirred when William had boasted that Setsu was such a great ama. She’d been equally angered when he’d told her how on the murder day Bertin had struck him.
And now, here she was sitting alone in Lesage’s house and being allowed a phase of objectivity. She should have gone along with Grady’s and William’s plan, just done her part, she thought. Why was it so crucial that she keep ahead of them in this matter? She had the urge to run away from the situation, to leave it all up to Grady and William. Run, she told herself, but when she stood up to run she merely went looking around the room.
“Let’s go!” Paulette called in to her from the hall. And as they were hurrying down the stairs, Paulette told her, “I brought along some things more suitable for you to wear.” A servant opened the main door to the courtyard with such perfect timing it seemed to Julia that he was an accomplice to their intentions.
Lesage drove. They sat three in the front of the black Corniche, Julia sharing the seat with Paulette. The top was down and the wind created by their speed whipped above and around them like a manic spirit. The docking shed was only a short ways up the bay, and they arrived there within a minute or two. Then it was hurry down the walk to beach level and into the shed.
Four of Lesage’s people were there on the dock, evidently expecting him. They were young, look-alike Caucasians. Deeply tanned crewing types with streaked blond hair, dressed in white shorts and plain white T-shirts. Their body language conveyed impudence.
Lesage stopped to talk to them while Julia and Paulette went aboard the sloop. Julia glanced back and saw Lesage emphatically giving instructions to the men. The sloop’s engines were already on and idling, riling the water of the slip, its exhaust causing gurgling and pops.
Lesage came aboard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Grady and William waited on the ketch for Julia a half hour before going ashore to look for her. They learned from a man in the everything store that she’d driven away with someone known only as the crab woman. Returning to the ketch, they got the two Glock semiautomatic pistols from the gun locker and put to pocket several full clips of eighteen rounds.
Ran the mile out to Highway 4.
Hitched a ride to the turnoff.
Ran the private road in to Lesage’s house.
They wondered what would explain William’s Porsche parked in the drive. Grady felt its hood. It was cool, had been there a while.
They entered the house, went right in by way of the main entrance. The downstairs hall was dark. One of the Thai servants appeared but when he realized their disposition and spotted the guns he dashed away. They paused there to listen for Lesage. The house was silent. It was decided Grady would search the downstairs, William went up.
William saw a light was on in Lesage’s bedroom. It turned out to be just a light left on, but, according to the condition of the cigar in a bedside ashtray, he knew Lesage had been there only minutes ago.
The study was equally abandoned.
While crossing that room William stepped upon a pearl. In picking it up he spotted another beneath the sofa. Two of the larger blues. Why, he wondered, would Lesage be that careless? Then he noticed the dah-she knife was missing from its glass case, saw that someone had forced the case open.
The sounds of a scuffle downstairs, some strident, high-pitched swearing and screams.
William rushed down and found Grady had one of the Thai servants up in the air and pinned against the wall. The diminutive Thai was flailing with his feet, trying to kick Grady in the groin, but he suddenly ceased that, having come to his better senses, decided his well-being was worth more than his job. He was so eager to inform that his words were all run together and incomprehensible, but, finally, he got across that Lesage had gone sailing with Paulette and the other woman.
The other woman would be Julia, Grady knew. He and William hurried out the back way, down the terraced slope to the beach. From there they could see the huge, rectangular structure of the docking shed about two miles down the bay, light from a three-quarter moon glinting on its black glass exterior.
They ran for it, full out. The tide was up, so there was no helpful, hard-packed edge to the sand, just soft give; tougher going, and by the time they’d covered half the distance, they were panting loudly, grunting with practically every stride, their lungs complaining.
But there was no room in Grady’s mind to admit the strain. His only thoughts were Lesage had Julia, at gun point, knife point, whatever, had her. Against her will. What had made her think she could confront Lesage on her own? Lesage was too much for her. Being courageous with snakes was one thing, murderer Lesage another. Lesage had her, Grady thought, she was in grave peril, he had to get to her in time.
He was soaked with sweat and his side had a stitch like an ice pick in it when he reached the docking shed. William had to struggle with him to force him to pause outside the shed—so they’d be in a condition to take on what they might encounter inside. Still, Grady couldn’t allow himself more than thirty seconds.
The sweat had poured down his arms to his hands and the Glock pistol felt slippery in his grasp as he opened the door to the docking shed and rushed in.
The first thing he saw was Lesage’s blue-hulled sloop. It was about a hundred yards down the dock. Its mooring lines were just then being freed and taken in.
The next thing Grady saw was the fair-haired young man in white coming at him. The black object in the young man’s hands was a machine pistol. He wasn’t coming in a crouch nor did he say anything, nor did he have any regard for the pistol in Grady’s hand. He just kept coming straight up and when he got close enough to suit him started firing.
Grady dropped to the concrete surface of the dock. William darted behind an upright steel beam for cover.
The young man fired three raking bursts. Bullets lacerated the air above Grady, pinged off the concrete, caused sparks wherever they hit something that was steel. Another such burst was surely forthcoming. There’d already been an inordinate number of misses.
Grady extended his arms.
Gripped the Glock with both hands.
Squeezed off two shots.
At that same moment William also fired twice, so it was impossible to tell whose bullets struck the young man. Not that it mattered. His head snapped back and then forward, as though it were on a spring, and he seemed to be looking down at the wounds in his chest, as he stumbled backward and went down.
Grady had never killed anyone. Perhaps, he thought, he still hadn’t.
Another young man, a counterpart of the first, came at a trot down the dock. He didn’t appear to be armed. His only concern, apparently, was his fallen comrade. He went directly to the body, kneeled to it, seemed to hug it.
Grady, in his front-down position on the concrete dock, didn’t have a good vantage. He saw the young man fumbling with something but he couldn’t make out what it was. It was entirely possible the young man was about to ask not to be fired upon, was going to stand and let his grief show, apologize for his fierce-tempered friend.
William, however, ha
d a somewhat better view. He wasn’t sure but he believed the live young man was turning the dead one over on his side to use him for cover. Wasn’t he digging into the dead one’s rear pocket for a fresh clip?
Yes, that was it.
The young man released the depleted clip from the machine pistol and rammed the fresh one in. Began firing, kept well down, held the pistol up and fired over the dead body without taking aim. All that was momentarily visible to Grady was the hand and the machine pistol spurting. One burst, then another.
Fired from that low angle the nine-millimeter bullets glanced and skimmed along the concrete close by Grady. Belly down as he was and exposed head-on to the line of fire, he was extremely vulnerable. He fired back, but his shots just chunked into the flesh of the body that concealed the young man.
The young man was concentrating his fire on Grady, ignoring William for the time being. William realized that, realized how Grady was in peril, pinned down as he was and with no cover. It was only by chance Grady hadn’t yet been hit and, William thought, only a matter of time before that happened.
William sidestepped out from behind the steel beam. Waited. There was the possibility that the next spray of fire from the young man would come in his direction. If so, he’d surely catch at least a bullet or two. Still, he kept his nerve, waited. And then, there it was, the black of the machine pistol in the young man’s hand. Only in sight for a moment. No time for William to take good aim. He pulled off two shots.
The machine pistol flew from the young man’s hand, landed beyond his reach.
The young man raised his bloodied hand and waved. Waved with both hands, signaling that he was giving up. He kneeled up with a pleading, thoroughly capitulating expression on his face. He stood up and turned away from Grady and William. He was counting on the possibility of their having the good guy compunction, that which he himself considered foolish and had never abided by. It was the reluctance to shoot someone in the back. He kept his back to them, took a couple of steps and then suddenly leaped into a sprint down the dock, where, no doubt, he’d find another weapon.
Grady was standing by now. He took careful aim, squeezed the slack from the trigger, felt his forefinger meet resistance, maintained the same pressure until the pistol discharged.
The bullet hit the young man where Grady had intended it to hit. The young man clutched at his right leg as it gave way, and he went into a spinning stumble, grabbing at the air as he went over the edge of the dock and dropped the seven feet into the water of the slip.
Two out of the way, how many more?
Grady saw Lesage’s sloop was now well clear of the dock and under way down the slip, bound for the bay. He and William ran full out down the dock, although they knew it was futile. Even if they caught up with the sloop the jump to get aboard would be impossible.
When they’d gone about two-thirds of the length of the dock they again came under fire. Literally under it this time. Two more of Lesage’s lethal young men had positioned themselves on the steel grate ramp overhung four stories above. They had a decided advantage and were making the most of it with their machine pistols, peppering shots down through the grating, causing lines of pocks on the concrete surface of the dock, near misses.
Grady and William quickly took to the wall, flattened against it. The overhang put them out of sight, but only barely.
Grady glanced to the open end of the huge boat shed. Just in time to catch a glimpse of the white-suited figure of Lesage at the helm in the stern of the sloop. Next the sloop was entirely beyond the docking shed and lost to the darker atmosphere of the bay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Aboard the sloop.
While Lesage was at the helm, maneuvering the sixty-footer into the channel, Paulette and Julia were below in the main cabin.
Paulette hadn’t declared discomfort or given any excuse for removing her clothes. She just proceeded immediately to take them off, did so in a way that distinguished her as a woman who knew best how to undress. There was nothing stripteasing about it, although it was done with regard to Julia’s point of view from an upholstered chair across from the side of the bed. How little mind Paulette seemed to be giving to this performance. (What else could it be called? Certainly not a seduction, for as far as Paulette was concerned that part was a fait accompli.)
For contrapuntal accompaniment Paulette spoke of things only obliquely relevant. For no particular reason she got off on Agnes Sorel, mistress of Charles VII, claiming that in the fifteenth century the French were a drab, pious bunch until Agnes, who was the first to wear attractive underwear, pluck her brows and make something of her bare breasts.
It appeared that Paulette would go on about Agnes but she broke off the subject abruptly, hummed a few bars that sounded somewhat like Pachelbel’s Canon and spoke of the wardrobe of man-tailored clothes she kept in her apartment in Paris. Everything made to measure, of course, and of the finest materials. Not that she wanted to obliterate her gender. It was just how amazingly secure she felt when mannishly dressed, and at the same time jaunty. For her the jauntiness was the most appealing thing, however when she had on trousers she felt handicapped with not being able to use the potent weapon that was her legs, Paulette said. Had Julia ever cross-dressed?
“Not entirely,” Julia replied.
Then, from Paulette, came a string of non sequiturs. Such as a confession that she was extravagantly interested in herself—she wished she’d have a day added to her life for every time she’d promised an admirer, male or female, that she’d phone the following day and hadn’t—why was it she was ashamed of being unhappy? Didn’t she deserve her fair portion of desolation?
Meanwhile she was slipping out of, pulling down, unbuttoning, mistreating one button with haste, tenderly urging the next through its hole. She didn’t take off her high heels, knew better than to divest herself of those helpers. Her rings were the last to go. They all cooperated except the large emerald on her second finger. “I always have trouble getting this one off,” she said as she twisted and tugged it and momentarily gave up on it.
She pulled open the drawer of the bedside cabinet, carelessly dropped the other rings in and left the drawer open.
In the drawer, Julia noticed, was the black of a small-caliber automatic pistol and the tan of the chamois sack containing the pearls. Lesage had placed the sack in that drawer, had brought the pearls along for starters, he’d said, to throw into the yield before they’d even opened an oyster. Generous of him, he’d been told.
Paulette got two kimonos from the closet. They were identical, of pale lavender silk. Substantial, slippery silk, at least eighteen mommes weight. She put one on, casually tied its sash and tossed the other to Julia.
Julia didn’t catch it, didn’t try, allowed the kimono to slide to the floor and let it lie.
Paulette saw that as a sign that Julia was having misgivings. Second or third thoughts about this escapade, perhaps even about her. The latter was unthinkable. “Don’t be concerned about Daniel,” she told Julia, “he only talks a good fuck.”
Julia smiled a fraction.
Paulette believed she had Julia back on track. She returned her attention to the stubborn emerald ring, went into the adjacent head to soap up the finger.
At once Julia removed the sack of pearls from the drawer. Put them in her shoulder bag. Stepped noiselessly out of the main cabin and locked the door from the outside. She went aft, up the companionway ladder to be on deck. She joined Lesage there behind the wheel. He was preoccupied with reading the green strobing buoys that marked the channel of the bay, where it ran between the oyster-bearing rafts. There was about a forty-degree turn in the meandering channel just then and he took it easily. He had the sloop running on minimal power for slow but sure going.
“You’re obviously quite a sailor,” Julia said.
“I’ve done my share,” Lesage said immodestly.
“It’s reassuring to know I’m in such capable hands,” Julia told him.
He concurred with a grunt, took out a pack of Gauloises from the breast pocket of his white flannel jacket and pulled one from the pack with his lips. Lighted it up. Usually when at the helm he was a no-hands smoker.
Julia pointed to a lever on the control panel. “What’s that?”
Lesage told her it was the throttle.
She asked about other indicators and devices on the panel, appeared to be keenly interested, and he told her what each was, told her, “When we get out of the bay I’ll let you take the wheel.”
“Oh, no,” she said brazenly, “we’ve better things to do.” And with that she went and sat on the aft edge of the cabin trunk, facing him about ten feet away. She could faintly hear Paulette trying the main cabin door down below, rattling it and pounding on it. She imagined the fury in Paulette’s eyes, that soft dark brown turned obdurate. She reached into her shoulder bag, kept the chamois sack hidden while she dilated its drawstring and got a fistful of the pearls.
“This is a much better boat,” she said levelly.
“Huh?”
“Better than that old one you had, the one with the rotting sails.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lesage asked sourly.
Julia threw one of the pearls at him. It whizzed by his head, and went into the bay. He only barely saw it go by, had no idea what it was. Just something she’d thrown.
She threw two more, both missed him, and he decided she was being playful. Maybe she was on something, he thought. She had that detached, unpredictable look about her. He’d probably misheard that rotting sail remark.
Julia threw another. This one caught him high on the cheek. Lesage saw it was a blue pearl when it dropped to the slanted surface of the control console and rolled off.
“Crazy bitch!” he growled. He started toward her, momentarily forgetting he had to tend the wheel. The most difficult portion of the channel was coming up, where it was more winding and became narrower between sections of oyster rafts. The next buoy was a crucial one. He kept well clear of it.
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