I nodded and she walked towards me, a pretty girl, blonde, wearing a light cotton dress. She had nice eyes and a nice smile. She said, ‘I’m Mary Carlyle,’ and held her hand out. ‘Dr Elston asked me to meet you.’
‘I’d expected him.’
‘Yes. He was...well, busy, I suppose. Anyhow, I had to cross over and he thought perhaps I could bring you back to Pelican in my boat.’
‘Yes, all right,’ I said. Then: ‘What’s Pelican?’
She looked mildly surprised. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No. Elston wrote me. He asked me to meet him here. He asked me not to write or phone - in fact, he made rather a point of that - just to be here, today.’ I made a gesture, manifesting my presence. ‘My paper seemed to think he was newsworthy - eminent biochemist and all that - and I wasn’t inclined to pass up a trip to the Keys. I’m a bit intrigued by all the secrecy, I must say.’
‘Oh, that. It’s very secret on Pelican,’ she said, smiling.
I had an idea that she didn’t really feel like smiling when she said that. It was a shadowed smile ... or, perhaps, a smile that foreshadowed something.
‘It must be...since I have no idea what it is.’
‘Pelican Cay. It’s an island.’
‘And that’s where Elston is?’
‘Um hum.’
The bartender came wandering down the bar, flicking at the polished surface with a towel. I asked Mary if she would like a drink and she said, ‘Of course.’ I liked her immediately. I also thought it could do no harm to talk to her. I had no idea how much she knew about why Elston had summoned me, but if it was anything at all, it was more than I knew. I was completely in the dark and curious about the things that - that no one should ever have to know. We got a couple of tall rum punches and went back to the booth. I sat opposite with a starfish ashtray between us, both of us in cool shadows.
‘Are you his assistant?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, laughing. ‘Do I look like a biochemist?’
‘Not really.’
‘I’m relieved. Actually, I live on Pelican. I’m one of the few natives, a real Conch. I was born there and never saw much reason to leave. Until recently...’ she added.
I waited but she didn’t follow that up.
I said, ‘Have you any idea what it’s about?’
She shrugged and sipped her drink, gazing at me across the rim of the glass.
‘Or why Elston chose me?’
‘Ummm,’ she said.
‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with my sort of work...’
‘Don’t be modest.’
‘...but I don’t write scientific papers and it seems...well...strange that Elston wanted to talk to me. Intriguing, in point of fact. A biochemist contacting a scandalmonger...’
Mary was laughing again. She said, ‘Dr Elston chose you because of your well-known discretion.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Oh, yes. When you refused to reveal your sources to the investigating committee after you broke the Warden scandal, and risked going to jail...well, he feels he can trust you.’
‘It’s like that, is it?’
‘Like that,’ she said, suddenly serious.
Well, she obviously knew something. But she was fencing. I thought I might engage her at an oblique angle. I said, ‘You know, Mary, I don’t like being an investigative reporter.’ She blinked, surprised. I managed a sheepish grin. ‘I’ve always wanted to write a novel,’ I told her, and that was true enough, but to my purpose. ‘I’ve tried. Not recently. Platitudes have bested me...and time...and following the course of least resistance. I make investigations and I write about them. I’ve acquired a certain reputation. And yet...the media deform truth. And that, in itself, is a truth. A fact, given to the masses, becomes malleable, as if the printed page were a distorted looking-glass, casting anamorphic reflections. The most blatant lie acquires an aura of truth, truth, in turn, is shadowed and pigeonholed and compartmented to fit the reader’s mind.’ I shrugged, not looking at her. I was turning the starfish ashtray on the table between us.
‘Strange talk from a newspaperman,’ she said.
‘Not so very strange. I’m no Diogenes, holding up a lantern. And yet ... I do write the truth, be that as it may. And I want people to be truthful with me.’ I looked up. ‘Mary?’ I said.
She flushed slightly.
She leaned closer; said, ‘Look, I’d better level with you, Mister Harland...’
‘Jack,’ I said. ‘And yes, you had.’
‘All right. Jack. It was my idea to write to you. I sort of talked Dr Elston into it, with the help of a few drinks and a little flirting. Oh, he wanted to. I didn’t force the idea on him. But he would never have done it, on his own. What I’m saying is...you may have come down here for nothing. Elston may not go through with it. But I figured it was worth a chance.’
‘Then you do know what it’s about?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Now she was playing with the ashtray, turning it back and forth like the pointers in a game of chance. ‘He wouldn’t tell me. But I do know he’s doing something, some sort of work, that he doesn’t want to do. He let me know that much, no more. He was...disturbed. More than disturbed. I got the impression that he’s in deeper than he intended, that his work is being applied in a manner of which he does not approve.’ She had a way of gesturing when she spoke, as if punctuating her words and making her statements profound - but it didn’t seem intentional or mannered. She was just a lively girl who got things done...who had got me to the Keys. ‘Dr Elston is a timid man, the classic scientist who knows little of humanity. He can be manipulated just as he manipulates his chemicals - just as I manipulated him into writing you. He was afraid to meet you today, Jack...afraid someone would find out.’ My eyebrows went up. ‘Oh, no, he’s not being restricted in any way, nothing like that. But he’s afraid. Afraid of his employers, afraid of his work. He trusts me, probably because I have no connection with those employers ... or perhaps because he needs to trust someone. But he’s given me no details.’
‘So you’re just a catalyst, causing reactions.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘Who are these employers?’
‘The government. A government agency.’
‘Which agency?’
‘I don’t know.’
I looked at her. She said, ‘Really ... I don’t.’
‘It’s getting interesting.’
‘It can get more than interesting, I think. This agency has taken over a large portion of Pelican...fenced it off in a compound, posted guards all around it...mined the island. And this happened just after the ban on germ warfare.’
She gazed thoughtfully at me.
‘Is that it? Germ warfare?’
‘Not that, I think. But something...that should be stopped. Elston wants it stopped. I suggested you. He’d heard of you, vaguely; he’s not the sort to read newspapers. I told him about the Warden thing and convinced him that you could let the world know what’s being done here, and thereby halt it, without implicating Elston. So that’s the story, so far. I can’t guarantee that he will talk to you, after all. As I said, he’s a timid man; he may well back out. He looked a bit sick after telling me as much as he did, in fact. But I think he will and I hope he does.’ She smiled. ‘I have an interest in this, you see. I bitterly resent them ruining Pelican. It was a paradise, now it’s like a prison. Why, they even fenced off my favourite beach!’ Then, serious again, she said, ’Whatever they’re doing there, it’s really very secret. Since the agency took over, we can’t even get an open telephone line out; have to channel all calls through a switchboard within the compound. That island is my home, Jack; you can imagine how I - and the other residents - feel about it. Jack, I work for the Coast Guard. Just a part-time thing. There’s a supply depot there and a lighthouse just off shore and...well, even the Coast Guard has to go through the switchboard, even the lighthouse is only connected to Pelican by a cable. No radio. One of my duties, i
n fact, is to talk to the lighthouse keeper. Sam Jasper. He’s very talkative.’
’A talkative lighthouse keeper?’
’Yep. Phones in all the time. You think maybe he’s in the wrong line of work?’
’Well, talking to you is...interesting.’
’I hope it pays off,’ she said.
I nodded. Our drinks were finished. I would have liked another and she was looking at her glass, but she had piqued my interest; I figured this might be a bigger story than I’d planned on. I said, ‘Shall we go, then?’ and we went.
* * * *
II
In the launch, which she handled expertly, she told me a bit about Pelican Cay. I took my shirt off and leaned against the gunwale, enjoying the spray and listening to her. Pelican, she told me, was a small island with one town looping in a crescent around a natural harbour. It had a colourful history. The first inhabitants had been wreckers, salvaging cargo from ships that had gone aground on the unmarked reefs - and were often lured onto those reefs by the wreckers. I raised an eyebrow at that; she shrugged; that was how it had been. Construction of the lighthouse had finished the wrecking industry in the mid nineteenth century, however, and the locals had turned their bloodstained hands to cigar-making, salt refining and, of course, fishing. It had been as populous and important as most of the Keys, for a while, but had declined after the Overseas Highway was completed in 1938, when the linked islands became more accessible and convenient. Mary was pleased by that; she liked Pelican as it was - as it had been before the agency moved in.
‘Of course, that’s exactly why they did move in,’ she said. ‘It’s an easy place to guard, to keep isolated and secure - and any stranger who showed up would be instantly noticed. Oh, the odd tourist makes the crossing...not enough to spoil things, though - they add to the local colour by contrast, bring in some money and, most important, give the locals an audience to which to play. We Conches are all born actors.’ She turned to smile at me. I recalled the way she gestured when she spoke. ‘Shrimpers, fishermen, Cuban refugees, retired smugglers...but they all play up to their images.’
She made Pelican sound pleasant and I could well understand why she resented the intruders.
‘What about accommodation?’ I asked.
‘There’s an inn. It functions mostly as a bar these days, but they’ll give you a room. The Red Walls.’
‘What?’
‘That’s the name of the place. The Red Walls. Red as in blood, don’t you know? The walls awash with blood. Used to be a smugglers’ den and the shrimpers drink there now...quite a history to the place, probably a story in itself. The locals will be pleased to give you all the gory details...embellished, no doubt; they’re rather proud of the reputation, they cherish infamy. Anyhow, you can check in there and I’ll let Dr Elston know where you are and try to get him to contact you, all right?’
I agreed.
‘And maybe...’ a spray of salt water slanted from her cheek; she paused; then: ‘Maybe you’d better not tell anyone who you are...why you’re here, I mean. Just pretend to be a tourist. I don’t expect they’d like it, if they knew Elston was talking to you...and he will feel better about it, anyway.’
‘Oh, I’ll use my famous discretion,’ I said.
‘I don’t know if they’d . ..’ she hesitated, then shrugged. She didn’t continue. A moment later she pointed. ‘There’s the lighthouse.’
I saw the grey tower rising up, mild surf breaking at the base. I could make out the low outline of the island. The launch was quick and the island came up fast. I saw a stretch of water between the island and the lighthouse and, anticipating my query, Mary said, ‘The lighthouse is off shore...sort of. About a hundred yards out, but there’s a rock reef connecting the two so that you can walk out at low tide, if you’re nimble. A reef and...’ she smiled ... ‘a cable, connecting Sam Jasper to me. He’ll be getting twitchy by now, with no one to talk to all morning.’
‘Well, you are nice to talk to.’
She looked at me, tilting an eyebrow.
‘The sheriff thinks so, too,’ she said. ‘He’s my boyfriend.’
I said, ‘So much for that.’
* * * *
Pelican Cay came up.
White as bleached bones in the sunlight, it dazzled; the glare made the shadows solid slabs of blackness so that, adjacent, they did not relate. Light and shade did not flow together through grey transition, they existed in separate dimensions...just as the island could be perceived on two levels - a pleasant, sunwashed isle...and the base whence wreckers had lured ships to destruction. Now, physically divided by the fenced compound, the dichotomy was truer than insight, more solid than a mood. Seagulls screamed as they dived at the water...and the timeless cry could have been the wail of doomed sailors drowning in the surf. The heat was so great it seemed to obey gravity, heavy on my shoulders and, in that glaring heat, I felt a chill...
* * * *
Then we were moving into the harbour, gliding past shrimp boats and a few cabin cruisers and some naked kids who were jumping off the dock. I noticed at least three waterfront bars. The screaming of the gulls faded; there was nothing sinister in the happy cries of the children. My mood passed.
Mary brought the launch into the Coast Guard slot and jumped nimbly out. I figured she would have no trouble crossing over the reef to the lighthouse. I tossed my overnight bag onto the dock and stepped out with seemly caution. Since she was the sheriff’s girl there was little sense in risking a soaking by feigning nimbleness. She tied the boat to the iron stanchion with a deft, intricate loop that looked, to me, like a Gordian knot. We walked up the wooden planking and I paused to put my shirt on. I had already started to burn. The docks were fenced off and there was a customs shed, but the gates were open and no one stopped us as we passed into the street. A pair of shore patrolmen sauntered past, all dazzling white. They looked into one of the bars. They appeared more wistful than dutiful. The dark interior was inviting, textured shadows unlike those black umbrae that had so strangely chilled me as we sailed, in. But Mary said she would walk me to the inn and we set off along the curved waterfront. Most of the town’s business fronted on the harbour and we walked past a turtle kraal, a ship’s chandler, a Cuban cigar-maker busy in his window and a couple more bars. Then we came to the jail and the sheriff came out.
He was a tall, fair-haired man with dark aviator glasses and a chin as big and square as a boot. He had a big, white Stetson in his hand and when he saw Mary he put the hat on, so that he could take it off again as he greeted her. He gave her a big smile and then looked suspiciously at me - not official suspicion.
‘Jerry, this is Jack Harland. Jack, Jerry Muldoon, Pelican’s only lawman.’
The suspicion left his face. He stuck his hand out and we shook. His hand was as big and square as his chin and I was surprised at how pleasant his smile was - one of those natural, easy smiles.
Mary said, ‘Jerry knows why you’re here.’
‘Good thing, too,’ he said. ‘I saw the two of you a-walkin’ together, took it to mind that he was bent on courtin’ you.’
‘Oh, no!’ I said, hastily. ‘I’m not even nimble.’
‘Ummm. What I mean is, it’s a good thing you’re here, not that I knew why you were here.’
‘Well, it’s a nice change to be welcomed by the law,’ I told him. I meant it, too. I had been advised to get out of town by sundown a few times. I said, ‘I take it you resent this...agency, too?’
‘Sure do. Damn usurpers.’
‘What?’
‘Usurpers,’ he said.
He put his hat on again and pulled the brim down to the top of his dark glasses, so that he had to tilt his head back to look at me.
‘That’s what they done, they done usurped my authority,’ he told me. ‘I was the only law on this here island and I admired to have it thataway, oh-yuh.’ His jaw worked as if he were chewing tobacco, but he wasn’t. Then he grinned and Mary giggled and I saw he was joking - playin
g his role. But joking on the square, I thought.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked, dropping the accent.
‘I was taking Jack to the Red Walls.’
Jerry laughed. ‘You’ll get your ear bent there, Jack. All those old boys that can’t forget the old days - nor remember them with any accuracy, either. They get them a landlubber, they plumb wear his earholes out.’ He slipped in and out of his rednecked accent and grace. ‘It was quite a place, though, going back a few years, from what I hear. Had the plumbers in there, year or two back, they were fitting a new toilet. Had to rip the plaster out; found eighteen wallets that had been slipped down a hole in the wall, where the whores and pickpockets slung them after they took the money out. Shootin’s, stabbin’s...you name it. Not the same now, though; tamed down. Or so I hear. Couldn’t say for sure, ‘cause there’s no way I’m gonna walk into that place on my own.’
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 65