Assignment — Angelina

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Listen," Mark said. "What do you really think about Corbin?"

  "He's nuts," Slago said flatly. "But why worry? He's got dough, right? And we'll get it, sooner or later."

  "We didn't start this just for peanuts. And I keep thinking about this thing we're after. Maybe one of the three we finished had it. We know it hasn't been lost or burned up, because of that A. Greene who answered the ad and then dropped it. But maybe one of the three — suppose we killed them too soon?"

  Slago laughed. "You'd like one of them to have told the cops what we asked about and blow the whole thing sky high? We decided, didn't we? Nobody left behind to talk about it. Who's going to remember they were all in the same squad? Some nick sheriff in Arizona? Or some fat chief of police in Indiana? Hell, Mark, take it easy. Labouisse has it. He's the last."

  "Is he?" Mark asked. Slago didn't say anything. Mark added softly: "There's you and me, Slago."

  It grew very quiet in the cabin. Mark waited, and then knew he had waited too long. Suspicion flickered in Slago's little eyes. From outside came the racket of an outboard motor on the little river that moved sluggishly into Bayou Peche Rouge. The distant thumping of a juke box in Moon's bar came across the fishing camp. A girl giggled in one of the cabins. It was growing dark. There were deep shadows in the room.

  Slago said mildly: "I think we're all crazy, buddy boy."

  Maybe so. But if Labouisse doesn't have it, there's only you and me. I know I don't have it. But I don't know about you."

  "Watch your mouth," Slago said.

  "You think I'd be stupid enough to let this go on, if I had Erich's papers?" Mark snapped. "Listen, I want that thing for Corbin. We get nowhere without it. He needs it. After that, we get into any bank in the country, like walking in and helping ourselves and walking out again. Nobody knows, nobody remembers. All the money we want. I'm not going to stand still if you're playing some stupid game with me."

  Slago took out his switchblade, snapped it open, and began cleaning his fingernails. "You always had too much brains for your own good. Always figuring odds and percentages, buddy boy. You get sick in the head that way. Don't worry about the guys I killed. They're just crumbs," Slago said quietly.

  Mark considered the bottle. His stomach was upset, and he didn't drink any more. "Labouisse has it, then. If he didn't burn it or lose it or sell it to somebody else for a souvenir after we advertised."

  "He has it," Slago agreed. "And when we get it, we all live in clover down in South America." The tension was gone from the room. "I'd like that plenty," Slago said softly. "I hear them Spanish women are like red peppers, especially when they're young. I'd like to bite off some of that."

  Mark got up off the bed and pushed open the screen door and let it whine and slam behind him. The shabby green shades in Corbin's cabin were drawn, and he heard the sound of a shower running. He walked over to Corbin's door and knocked and walked in.

  * * *

  This cabin was identical with the one he shared with Slago, but it was neat and tidy, not strewn with clothes the way Slago lived, like a pig. Erich was not in sight. The bathroom door was partly open for air, and the hiss of the shower came from there. Mark closed the outer door quietly. The outboard motor on the river was gone. Neon lights winked over the fisherman's camp, in the fly-specked window of the bar where beer, sandwiches, Coke and fishing tackle were for sale to the sportsmen. Darkness had come, and insects and heat were more oppressive than before. The heat was almost tangible, like something you could push and claw at.

  "Erich? Jessie?"

  He walked deliberately into the bath, the beat of his heart suddenly quickening. He saw her just as she stepped out of the tin shower cabinet. Long clean legs, womanly hips, high proud breasts, jeweled with the tepid water she had just turned off. She had tied a towel around her long hair. Mark heard the sudden thud of his pulse in his ears. He didn't move, and she didn't try to cover her nakedness. Her violet eyes went cautious and then blank.

  "Don't be foolish, Mark," she said softly. "Get out."

  "I'm not worried about anything. Are you?"

  "Erich will be back soon. Stop staring at me. Didn't you ever see a woman before?"

  "Not like you, Jessie." His voice tricked him, suddenly going hoarse with the uneven stroke of his heart. "You're beautiful."

  "Hand me that towel," she said calmly.

  He shook his head. "Get it yourself. I like to see you move around."

  She shook her head impatiently and reached for the bath towel on the rack. He let her get her hand on it before he caught her wrist and pulled her roughly to him. For just a moment she fought against his solid strength, and then she stumbled against him and caught at his shoulder. His hands slid over her wet body.

  "Don't, Mark."

  "You promised me," he whispered.

  "I never."

  "The way you looked at me."

  "No."

  "What's Erich to you? An old man. You don't love him. Why did you ever hook up with him, anyway?"

  "He brought me back, Mark."

  "Is that all? Is that why you married him?"

  "That's one of the reasons."

  "But you don't love him. And I'm crazy about you, Jessie."

  He forced her head up, cupping his hand under her chin, and made her meet his eyes. In the gathering dusk, her violet eyes seemed enormous, swimming darkly, and then they suddenly went blank again with that opacity he could not understand. It was as if she retreated somewhere he could not follow. To hell with her mind, he thought savagely- His blood pounded in him. His hands moved and he felt her slowly gathering response; he heard the whispered exhalation of her breath and her weight clung more heavily. They moved together through the doorway toward the bed. Her head was down, and he could not see the expression on her face. The room was dark and hot and filled with the small sounds they made.

  He didn't hear the door slam until it was too late.

  Jessie slapped him. He hardly felt it. Her gesture was too late to hide the obvious position of surrender she had adopted.

  Erich stood for a moment inside the doorway. He was a small man, but in Mark's eyes he loomed as an enormous shadow against the irregular pulse of red neon light from Moon's bar across the parking lot. The woman in the cabin at the end of the row giggled again. A bottle broke somewhere. A bird called, forlornly.

  Erich had a Luger in his hand.

  Mark got off the bed slowly, adjusting himself. His voice sounded distant to him. "Wait a minute, Erich. You don't understand."

  "But I do," Corbin said gently. "Even in this country, I could kill you with justice. Jessie, please get dressed. Quickly, now. And do not come out until I call you."

  "Erich, don't do anything silly." She sounded cold and sure of herself. "Remember what we planned."

  "I remember everything, liebchen. Everything I know about you. Go and do as I say. I will not kill him. We are almost at the end of our first phase of the plan. Would I risk disaster by firing a gun in this place, when we are so near success? I am not so stupid."

  Mark said flatly: "Then put away the gun."

  "You understand, I let you go because of necessity. And because I know nothing happened, because you had not the time. But I shall not forget." Corbin's glasses winked suddenly as he turned his head to watch Jessie's pale body move obediently into the bathroom. Then he looked back at Mark. "Go call Sergeant Slago. I have located our man. He is not a shrimp fisherman, after all. It is only a part-time occupation with him. The boat met with an unexpected gale and put in at a port twenty miles from here. He is still there. I telephoned. We will meet him there. You and Slago must be very careful, very sure this time. He has it. We must operate on the assumption that he is the man named A. Greene who answered our advertisement, and then vanished. When we get what we want I shall have to work quietly for a day or two, preparing what we need. I would appreciate it if you did not disturb me by making further advances toward my wife."

  There was a fanatical quality
in Corbin's voice that brooked no further argument. Mark was acutely aware of the sounds of Jessie's movements in the bath. He nodded. He was covered with sticky perspiration. His stomach burned with indigestion. Anyone else, with a wife like Jessie, finding her like this, would have blown his cork.

  He paused outside and looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. His body ached with frustration. Slowly, he walked across the parking lot toward the bar for another drink.

  Chapter Four

  Durell arrived in New Orleans at nine o'clock the next morning. He rented a black Chevrolet at the airport, had breakfast at the counter, and drove south into the delta country. The heat was oppressive, but he did not mind it. He wore a thinly woven sport shirt with an open collar, light gabardine slacks, and buckled sandals. His .38, a Smith & Wesson with a very short barrel, was in his brown pigskin suitcase.

  He was in Bayou Peche Rouge at ten and had coffee with his grandfather Jonathan aboard the hulk of the Three Belles. The old man was unchanged, no different since Dwells boyhood. He was tall and straight, with thick white hair and alert blue eyes, and in the back of his mind, ready for instant use, lay every clean and dirty trick of the gambling trade. He had won the ancient Mississippi side-wheeler on the turn of a card and then, on learning that his wife had died in the fire that gutted the house on the bayou, he had run the old steamboat up into the mud beside the fire-blackened chimneys and charred walls, and he had lived there ever since. The side-wheeler itself had burned to the waterline once, but he had stubbornly rebuilt her. Durell had no idea how much the old man was worth. Jonathan had raised him after an accident took both Sam's parents, and the vast, echoing hull of the steamboat, with its dusty and faded Victorian splendors, was the only home he had ever recognized.

  They did not talk about Durell's business until after they'd had their coffee. The old man's voice was firm. "You look fine, Samuel, just fine." They stood in the high pilothouse of the steamboat, forward of the twin, rusty smokestacks. The old man wore a captain's visored cap on his white hair. "It's good to see you again, son."

  "And good to see you. Grandpa." Durell had called Jonathan from Washington. "Did you find out anything about Labouisse?"

  The old man grinned. "He's engaged to marry a former lady love of yours. Samuel. Remember Angelina, boy?"

  Durell smiled briefly. "I remember."

  "A young colt must get his studding done early. You think I didn't know how you took her that day?"

  "You were always a step ahead of me, Grandpa." Durell had a quick memory of a sultry day in the green stillness of the bayous. He recalled the way the swamp grass had felt on the old cheniere where he had awkwardly fumbled through his first attempt at love.

  "She's grown up into a mighty handsome woman, Samuel."

  "What about Pierre?"

  "He didn't come home last night from his fishing trip," Jonathan said. "Nobody has heard from him yet." The old man's glance was acute. "I know the work you do, Samuel. But I can't figure out what a simple man like Pete Labouisse could have to do with your job."

  "He has something the government is looking for."

  "Pete?" Jonathan made a snickering sound. "He's missing the proverbial pot, boy. Set himself up as a photographer in Peche Rouge, studio and all, takin' baby pictures of the Cajun women's set. Don't make much of a livin' at it, so he goes mate on Joe Tibault's shrimper out on the Gulf, now and then. Reckon when he marries Angelina, though, hell move into the general store and be fixed good in more ways than one. That Angelina is a woman, Samuel. What could Pete have that Washington wants?"

  "We're not sure vet. And it's not just Washington," Durell said. "Somebody else wants it. If they get to him first, Pierre will suddenly find that somebody has cut his throat." The old man looked sober for a long moment. Durell felt a great wave of affection for him. He said: "I stopped at the Town Landing, Grandpa, but Joe Tibaults boat wasn't there. Where is he?"

  "Ran into bad weather out in the Gulf. Knocked out their radio and damaged the engine. They put in a ways down the shore yesterday, late in the evening. I saw Angelina last night, after you called. She hadn't heard from Pete, so I drove down. Joe says a man was waiting for Pete and they drove off in this fancy car."

  "If Pete hasn't come home, then I may have got here too late," Durell said.

  "It still don't figure that Labouisse has anything of value to anybody. Except maybe to Angelina. The old man laughed again. "Make me twenty years younger, and I'd relish the job of consoling her.'

  "You'd be plenty man for her, Grandpa." Durell grinned. "Wasn't Pete given up for drowned some months ago when he went shrimping and the boat was lost? Joe Tibault told me something about it."

  Jonathan nodded. "Everybody in Peche Rouge figured Pete had gone to the bottom. Turned out he drifted around on some wreckage and was picked up by some Mexicans operating out of Yucatan. Pete didn't figure anybody would miss him much, so he stayed there for a spell. Angelina already had a lawyer goin' through Pete's effects, ready to sell off his camera equipment and stuff. But Pete showed up in time to keep her from sellin' his shirt. Gave her a black eye for not havin' faith in his return." The old man smiled wryly. "Where you going, Samuel?"

  Durell had stood up. "I'd better talk to Angelina."

  "She remembers you well, son."

  "Maybe I'm too late in more ways than one," Durell replied.

  * * *

  He had parked the rented Ghevy in the shade of the fire-blackened ruins in the clearing opposite the side-wheeler's mooring. Vegetation had long ago softened the tragic outlines of the gutted house. A fish jumped and splashed in the black-green waters of the bayou behind him. A graveled lane led to the Peche Rouge road, and he drove slowly through the humid morning mist that shrouded the moss-draped live oaks and gaunt cypress trees on either side of the bayou.

  The town was small, with the highway acting as the main street. There were the usual bars and diner, the National Bank in traditional granite, a courthouse square with more giant oaks, two sporting-goods shops, and the general store that Angelina had inherited from her father, Abner Greene. Durell drove slowly by each place as it evoked his boyhood memories. The old frame school building had been replaced by one of brick, with coldly functional lines that jarred radically with the sleepy, weather-beaten houses surrounding it. There were the same churches, however, and the Town Landing on the bayou canal looked drowned in golden sunlight. Pelicans swam in dirty-brown awkwardness in the murky waters around the boats tied to the pier. At the northern edge of the town limits he found Pete Labouisse's photo shop.

  It was in a gray, two-story frame house, in the front of which had been placed a store window. The house needed a coat of paint. The scrubby lawn beyond the sagging picket fence needed mowing. There was a scanty display of photographic equipment, cameras and enlargers, but most of the window space was filled with big yellow and red Kodak ads. Behind the display, a large black window shade had been drawn against the heat of the morning sun.

  Nobody was in sight. Durell drove a bit farther and parked in front of a diner and walked back. The heat clamped on the back of his neck like a giant fist. Distantly, from the center of town, came the sound of church bells. Even the insects were somnolent in the humidity.

  There were framed baby portraits, none of them very good technically, flanking the front door. Durell did not go in through the gate in the picket fence. He cut between the next two houses and returned to the back of the building by way of a sandy lane edged with a rickety board fence. Weeds grew chest-high on either side of the walk. Behind the house was a wilderness of scrub pine that merged into the richer green of the bayou, and he realized that the channel was not too far off when he heard the steady heat of a boat's motor through the trees.

  The upper windows were closed with wooden shutters. A gallery circled the back end of the house, with a separate flight of steps going up to a door on the second level. A pirogue rested on two sawhorses among the weeds in the back yard.

  Durell felt
the weight of his gun in its holster under his arm. He had put on his jacket in order to cover the revolver, and he felt a trickle of perspiration sliding down his chest as he paused in the shadows of the fence. He didn't like the desolate air of this place. He had approached danger many times before, and he had developed an intuitive feeling for it, much like the sixth sense Jonathan had instilled in him toward a poker hand. In his business a hunch was usually worthless, inferior to an objective appraisal of a given situation, with a logical course of action worked out beforehand. Yet his feeling of danger persisted, and he did not deny its importance.

  He waited and watched, but he saw nothing and heard nothing except the occasional sound of traffic on the highway beyond the house. Finally he left the shadows of the fence and walked around the pirogue in the back yard and approached the back door. It was standing slightly open.

  He tested the board steps going up to it. They would creak under his weight, and he walked on the very edge, moving without sound until he touched the weathered door panel. Insects clicked and hummed and buzzed in the weeds behind him. The passing boat in the invisible canal had gone by. A fish-hawk sailed silently overhead and settled in one of the Australian pines. Durell pushed the door open, moving close inside with the swing of it as he had been trained to do, and then slid quickly to one side against the wall.

  Something fell over with a loud, echoing clatter. He got his gun in his hand, ready for use. But nothing more happened.

  He saw that a tin pail had been balanced precariously on the board floor just inside the doorway, and he knew it had been set there deliberately, to give warning to someone inside the house if the door should be opened. Pressure began to exert itself along his nerves. Pete Labouisse was the last survivor of the squad, except for Fleming and Slago. Perhaps he wasn't too late, after all.

  He found himself in an old-fashioned, summer kitchen, a shed filled with odds and ends of broken furniture, lumber, and what looked like the parts of a copper still. Another door was open directly ahead. He waited, listening, then moved through this doorway into a more modern kitchen, and then he waited again.