I thought about it and could not picture it. But then, that kind of money had never been a driving force in my life.
“You will note the absence of sons in the current family, the absence of any heir at all? The admiral’s wife and daughter died within six months of one another, leaving him alone in his advanced years. He appears to be the end of the line.”
“Which means … ?”
“Unlimited ability to pick his pockets.”
“With access—”
“Absolutely.”
“A snuff film with Mary’s brand,” I mused. “If MacGruder knows she played a part, and that we have the proof, he’ll pay anything to protect his career and to protect his daughter’s reputation.”
“You’ve got that in the proper order, Mr. Caine. His career will always come first.”
“What did he say when you approached him?”
Thompson looked at me sharply. For the second time today I’d taken him by surprise.
“Did he tell you about that?”
“Yes,” I lied. I’d made a guess and it appeared to have been a good one. I was getting information that wouldn’t have been available otherwise. If only I knew where all this was going.
“Then you must be very close to the admiral. Or you caught him off guard.”
“He saved my life a long time ago.”
Thompson grinned, neat little capped teeth on display, so uniform they looked nearly pointed, his otherwise handsome features a Halloween mask. “He saved you so we could pluck him. That’s wonderful.”
“You have the tapes on board?”
Thompson nodded. He left the lounge and returned with a VHS tape cassette with a commercial label. The label featured a cartoon of Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins pulling the strings of a puppet I recognized as the actress who played Eliza Doolittle. I couldn’t remember her name.
“My Fair Lady?”
“You like that?”
I wasn’t interested in whimsy, but I smiled politely. He started the tape and fast-forwarded the machine, causing the opening dance numbers to fly across the screen. In the middle of a song-and-dance number there was a sudden overlay. The washed-out colors of the old production gave way to a muted but clear video picture of the same room in which Mary had previously participated. The camera angle was identical. The background was the same. Thompson slowed the tape to normal speed and the Hollywood production was replaced by the still life of the rack and the room, giving me a slight case of vertigo.
This time I noticed plastic tarps covering the carpet. I braced myself to watch what I did not want to watch, knowing what I was going to see.
At first the set was empty. The rack was featured in the foreground, the camera angle head-on. No imagination would be required. When the action began, two men led a docile and naked young woman into the camera’s vision. There was no sound but the hiss and pops of the speakers, and I thought it was a silent video until one of the men coughed. The production was off to a slow start. The actors didn’t appear to be certain what they were going to do. It occurred to me this might have been a first attempt.
The girl was frightened. I could tell she was in some kind of chemical cloud, but it wasn’t deep enough to overcome her apprehension. The drug-induced placidity and the nervous tension combined to make her look like a slightly disturbed cow. Her face was plain and doughy in a way that reminded me of a younger version of the woman in American Gothic. She wasn’t pretty in the classic sense, but youth flatters even the plainest of features. Her body, however, was spectacular, the classic Venus figure. In a few years, and after a couple of children, it would become a disappointment, but the camera caught her in full bloom, before time’s assault started wearing down the tissues. Her breasts were perfect, full and round, with pink nipples pointed toward the heavens. She’d never had children. Her hips flared from a narrow waist. Strong, athletic legs supported her, or would have had she been able to stand on her own. The drug and her fear weakened her.
Mary MacGruder was not present. Two Asian males wearing nothing but black ski masks handled the girl, strapping her onto the rack. Both were physiologically affected by their task. I made a clinical appraisal of their bodies. They were not American bodies. Flabby and hairless, they had the typical Asian middle-management, middle-aged flaccidity that comes from spending years behind a desk with little or no exercise. These were merchants, predators of the marketplace, out for adventure.
I remembered a recent scandal in California where a rancher sold hunting rights on his land to deep-pocket businessmen. The “hunters” paid big dollars to shoot big-game animals on the ranch. All of the animals were either tied to posts or in cages when the “hunters” shot them. It made me wonder what these assholes paid for the privilege of raping and killing this helpless girl.
Her mouth was gagged with a rubber ball, kept in place with an elastic tube around her head. I’d never seen anything like it, but it effectively cut off any attempt at screaming. The camera never moved during the preparations, and no words were exchanged between the two men. It was a sweaty, tedious demonstration of inefficiency. The men’s hands were shaking. Curiously, the girl attempted no protest, cooperating with her captors. That for me was the most disturbing thing of all.
I memorized the girl’s face and body. I noted a small red tattoo on her right hip. It appeared to be a tiny red heart. I couldn’t make out the caption that floated on her flesh above it. She had a keloid scar on her right knee, evidence of old ligament surgery.
And the resemblance of her face to the woman in American Gothic was striking. I knew I would never again be able to look at that painting without remembering this girl.
After some preliminary preparation, one of the Asians mounted the girl and grunted against her. It reminded me of pigs mating, except pigs had more intelligence and gentility. He finished quickly, a little too quickly to suit the other man’s taste. When he withdrew, his penis slack, his partner laughed and said something I did not understand. I listened intently. The language was Japanese. It was too fast for me, but I caught the word sakanaya, “fish market.” The first man shook his head and replied, also in Japanese.
I looked to Thompson for clarification, but he wasn’t listening. He was lost in the movie.
The second Japanese raped her. He was harsher and took longer. As his excitement built, he became rougher still, slapping the girl. The more excited he became, the harder he slapped her. The first man positioned himself behind the rack and slipped a piece of narrow white line around her neck.
I tried not to watch the screen but I made the mistake of looking at the girl’s eyes. They were the only part of her body she could move. The second man neared climax and shouted to the first man. I didn’t know what he said but his meaning was clear. The rope began to tighten. I watched the girl’s eyes widen, pleading for help.
The man did a bad job of strangling her. It took a long time, but I could not take my eyes from her face. Finally her eyes lost focus. Even with the poor quality of the tape I could see the exact moment when her body went slack.
The man climaxed as life left her body.
He pulled himself out of her and helped his partner cut down the body. The way the corpse dropped to the floor it was obvious the girl was dead. I’d seen enough bodies to recognize the real thing. The rope was embedded in her neck as it had been in Mary MacGruder’s.
This was how Mary died? As a play toy for visiting businessmen? Somewhere there would be a tape of the act. I had to get my hands on it and destroy it. It was something I could never show to MacGruder. And I didn’t want anyone else to view it for pleasure or for justice. I wanted to bury the tape as deep as I could.
All the tapes.
I wanted to get my hands on Thompson and strangle him as this girl had been strangled. But not yet. His time would come. I had a job to do first.
The picture faded and was replaced by Eliza Doolittle singing and gliding around what looked like a two-story English library set, an obscene counterpoint.<
br />
Thompson got up and rewound the tape. “If you run it backward you can bring her back to life,” he said.
I didn’t even smile.
“How much do you get for one of those?” I asked, distrusting my voice.
“Fifty thousand. In cash. The buyer can participate if he wishes, of course. He can take his pick: a blonde, a brunette, a boy, a girl, twins, whatever his tastes. Some requests are more difficult to fill and therefore more expensive. This is a small island and if we have to import for any reason the cost goes up. Disposal was a problem, too, but we managed to solve that.”
“How many tapes do you have?”
“Trade secret, my friend. I can’t tell you. But I can tell you that I will soon have enough to retire. And that is what I plan to do. Mary hit on a gold mine. Smart girl. Japan and Taiwan have an almost inexhaustible market, but I’ve got to be careful. I only sell by word of mouth. I have a very select clientele, as you can well imagine, and I’ll only speak to a new customer upon the recommendation of a trusted and valued old friend.”
“Mary think of this?”
“No. She was against the snuff, but she liked all the rest. She defied me, tried to set some girls loose I had collected for special orders from Japan.
“When she thought it was all for fun, when it was just fuck-for-money movies, she procured for me. You’d be surprised how many little tourist girls are willing to take their clothes off for five hundred dollars or free dope, especially if there’s a beautiful young girl doing the selling. They felt safe. When it got rough, Mary didn’t care. We’d calm them down afterward and convince them it was all fun and games.
“But Mary didn’t like the idea of killing the girls. I think she had a soft spot somewhere inside of her, although I hadn’t seen that before.
“It got so she threatened to take me to the authorities. She actually got away from me once and tried to hide out in the cane fields. Nearly succeeded, but my people found her and brought her back. Then I got tired of arguing with her and arranged for her own film. That one has a price of a hundred thousand. She was a trophy, natural blonde, admiral’s daughter, and all that. And she was one beautiful woman. A lot of spunk. Had to give her a sedative to get her to cooperate, and then wait until it wore off before we could do the movie. She fought me all the way. It was wonderful. Would you like to see it?”
He smiled at me. I wanted to take a lamp and smash him with it repeatedly.
“No.”
“Get kind of a queasy stomach? These aren’t for everybody. But they make money.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Well, Mr. Caine, I’m going back to the yacht club for dinner. You’re not going so far. As I said, we do special requests. We’ve just had one about man-eating sharks.”
I glanced briefly out the porthole over his shoulder, at the rolling blue ocean beyond the railing.
“They’re out there, you know. Big ones. Tiger sharks, whites, hammerheads. Man-eaters. And they get hungry right about now. You’ll notice that it’s three-thirty?”
I kept my gaze on Thompson. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“While we were watching the movie my men were chumming. Did you know that a shark can sense one part of blood in thirty million parts of seawater? We’ve been dumping gallons of blood into the ocean behind us for the past half-hour. By now I’m sure we’ve got some interested company.
“I’ll miss my little secretary. She was a honey, but there’s always another around. Pretty girls are completely replaceable.” He clapped his hands. “Frank! Bring her now!”
I disagreed with him and said so. Pretty girls were a vanishing resource and should be protected and cherished whenever and wherever possible. They’re like the trees in a rain forest. No matter how many there are, there are never enough.
“You put on a good act, Caine, but I know you’re tight with Chawlie Choy, not MacGruder. His little actress told us all about your plan. She didn’t want to, but … well, yes she did. In the end she wanted to tell us everything. It was very important to her to keep us happy.”
I gripped the edges of the lounge chair. I’d brought a couple of weapons with me in case the party got rough. They were in inconvenient places but they were still there.
“Once you’re out of the way MacGruder will pay up and Choy will leave me alone. This will be an object lesson for Choy. Losing three of his people in one week.”
“Winners and losers,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Thompson, smiling his tombstone smile. “And I’m always the winner.”
Tweedledee, one of the two shadows I’d met before, brought Jasmine into the lounge. She had not changed but she’d lost her high heels and gained a pair of handcuffs. Without her shoes she looked even tinier, like a lost child. The black bikini was in place, but loose, as though it had been dragged onto her by someone else. Her face was white. She knew what was happening and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“Have fun in there?” Thompson treated the man he called Frank like a pet. After getting what he needed from Chawlie’s spy he’d thrown her to him the way he would throw a bone to a junkyard dog.
Tweedledee smirked at me. He wore only purple Speedos. There were bruises on his face and arms and he moved carefully, as if any movement hurt. Acne raged across his back, evidence of long-term abuse of anabolic steroids. “We had some fun.” He wrapped one palm around one of Jasmine’s breasts, proclaiming ownership. His thumb and forefinger rolled a nipple back and forth beneath the spandex. She flinched, but said nothing. Her fear was absolute and all thought of resistance had fled.
I was dressed for yachting in a pair of loose khaki trousers, deck shoes without socks and a white polo shirt. I wore no watch and carried no wallet or identification, only a couple of bills in my right front pocket. I didn’t even have the keys to my boat. They were still in the ignition of the Jeep. I did have some surprises. My belt buckle was a two-inch dagger, and a Phrobis knife was strapped upside down to my left calf. My fallback weapon was secured to the inside thigh of my other leg, snugged up tight against my groin.
Time was running out. I only hesitated because I wanted to see where the other two crew members had gone before committing myself. I heard a noise behind me and started to look around when somebody hit me on the back of the head.
I was surprised how much it hurt.
Then nothing hurt.
19
When the world swam back into focus I found my hands cuffed behind my back. I was facedown on the deck, missing my shoes and shirt. The hot sun beat down on my bare back. Blood dripped from behind my left ear, puddling on the teak deck near my nose, smearing into my face and hair. The Phrobis knife was gone from its sheath, but my belt buckle still pressed against my stomach. I carefully rubbed my thighs together. The UM-1 bangstick, a small telescoping cylinder taped to the inside of my upper thigh, had not been discovered. And I was alive. That was the good news. I was handcuffed on a boat owned by a man who killed people the way McDonald’s sold hamburgers. That was the bad news. That, and the heavy weight belt strapped around my waist.
A few feet away the two flimsy pieces of Jasmine’s black bikini lay on the deck. A trail of quarter-size blood drops led to the railing.
A hand grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled my head from the deck.
“You thought you were clever, Caine.” Thompson’s voice was next to my ear, somewhere behind me. “It took only twenty-four hours to find what you were about. Giving me Choy’s son was a wasted effort. It’s true I didn’t know about the theft, and I will use it against his father. And it helped me find his little spy. The old man owes me a big one for trying to infiltrate my organization.
“You and Choy killed that boy just to give you credibility. I can’t say I don’t admire that kind of cold-blooded thinking, but it didn’t work. By the time the boy died I knew more about his old man than Choy will ever know about me. You did intrigue me, though. We needed to have this little chat. I�
�m still a little disappointed to find you were so easy.”
“Don’t let it get around,” I said. “Ruins my reputation.”
He slammed my face against the teak.
“I always appreciate style, Caine. Don’t lose it.”
While my head was raised I got a glimpse of where we were. It wasn’t encouraging. Pele was about five miles off Makapu’u Point. These weren’t good waters for swimming. There’s a strong current running south and east, toward the island of Molokai, called the Molokai Express. It might be easier swimming the distance to that island than trying to get back to shore on Oahu. If the sharks didn’t find me first.
“Mr. Caine, I’d like to continue our chat but you’ve got to go. The girl has already left us. There’s a big brute out there, looks to be about a twenty-footer, reminded me of a small submarine. But it’s a real tiger. Biggest shark I’ve ever seen. There’s a smaller one, too, fifteen or sixteen feet. I don’t think it got a chance to feed earlier, so it might be hungry.
“The big one made short work of the girl. Two bites. It was a short tape, too. Might disappoint the customer. But you’re dessert.”
And with that, strong arms lifted me from the deck and threw me overboard.
I hit the clear blue water with a tremendous splash. It sounded like a small whale breaching. That’s one way to call sharks.
Sharks were not my first worry. I was sinking fast. Pressure on my ears was intense and increasing. I did what I could to clear them by yawning. That’s hard to do with your mouth closed but the pain and disorientation of broken eardrums in addition to my other troubles right then would finish me.
I worked my cuffed hands down over my buttocks and thighs and finally to the back of my calves. The chain on the cuffs caught on the empty knife sheath. Ignoring a rising panic, I concentrated on the task at hand, determined to get it right, moving the metal links back and forth to try and free them. The chain suddenly came free and my hands were in front of me, the effort nearly dislocating my shoulders. I tripped the quick release buckle on the weight belt. One of the blocks of lead painfully rapped my foot as the heavy belt plummeted toward the depths.
Diamond Head Page 10