by Basil Copper
“Penny for them,” said Stella, frowning at my concentration.
I didn’t answer for a moment. Then I started the motor and gunned the car smoothly out of the lot.
“I was just wondering,” I said. “Wondering what a Chicago mobster was doing in a place like this.”
I still hadn’t got the answer by the time we arrived back at the hotel.
CHAPTER TWO
On the Beach
1
The lunch was especially good. Stella and I sat on in the dining-room and worked our way through a second helping of coconut-tomato soup, followed by guava chutney. I settled for baked plantains with minced beef as a follow-up and lolled forward in my chair, one hand on the stem of an agreeably chilled glass. I sat with my back to the sea; somehow I had enough of the blue stuff for one morning, but Stella looked eagerly out through the window over my shoulder as though she was afraid of missing something.
It was difficult to spoil that girl’s enthusiasm, I told myself Hell, though, she had earned a holiday just as I had. She had changed into a lemon-yellow dress, with a pink scarf at her neck; the top two buttons of the dress were open but the modest cleavage revealed generated as much interest in me as it would have if another woman’s had been open down to the navel. I really would have to do something about Stella some time, I told myself. Right now it was too hot. I took a mental reservation for the winter months and went back to the menu.
“Where did you meet the Colonel?” I said, returning to a topic we had touched on earlier. Stella frowned slightly and waved offhandedly to a shadow passing the window outside the dining-room.
“Somewhere in Conch Cay, I suppose,” she said. “He suddenly seemed to be there. He’s that sort of man. The McSwaynes said something about him coming to see his boat. He keeps a small yacht there. Supposed to be very fond of fishing. So it seemed natural to ask him to join us for a drink.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Why the inquisition, chum?”
I laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “I’m not jealous. It was just that I was curious about the Colonel. I wondered how much of his interest was social, and how much professional.”
Light dawned on Stella’s face. She smiled faintly.
“You mean the two men at the Inn?” she asked.
“Could be,” I said. “One of them at least has a criminal record. I wonder whether I ought to mention it to the old boy when he rings.”
“For Pete’s sake, Mike, let it rest,” said Stella. “After all, you are on holiday.”
“Just idle curiosity,” I reassured her. “I don’t want to get mixed up in international affairs. British territory, don’t yer know.”
She laughed at my imitation of the English accent as the waiter appeared again at my elbow. We ordered dessert and a demi-tasse to follow.
Though it was as hot as all hell, we just couldn’t keep off the coffee.
“All the same, sweetie,” I said, draining my second cup a few minutes later, “a word in the Colonel’s ear wouldn’t come amiss.”
She frowned again but said nothing.
“All well, sah?” said the waiter, materialising from somewhere behind my right shoulder. I might have jumped except that I was too well-trained. All the same he would have made a good professional assassin.
“First-rate,” I reassured him. He grinned from ear to ear.
I figured the recommendation would cost me at least another dollar on the tip.
As we went down the terrace after the meal I stopped and looked towards the beach. There was a familiar figure playing with a black and white striped rubber ball. Her legs were etched black against the liquid silver of the sea but there came a flash of gold as she changed position and the sun caught her hair. Then she ran farther up the beach and I saw once again the polka-dot bikini that had caught my attention in the morning.
I glanced towards Stella but she had gone back up the terrace towards the hotel lobby. The blonde number spun on one leg and struck a pose against the ocean backdrop. Then she waved cheekily to me. I waved too. She threw the ball towards me and waited. It was pretty obvious she wanted me to throw it back. I pointed towards the receding figure of Stella and shrugged. I could see her grin even from that distance.
I went on into the hotel lobby. On pretext of smelling the flowers on an ornamental table set into the wall on one side of the tessellated pavement, I glanced into the gilt mirror meant to double the effect of the flowers. I thought I looked pretty trim, seeing I was in my thirties and all. All right, Faraday, I said to myself; you’ve still got it, boy.
Stella’s humorous cough sounded right behind me, but her smooth face remained enigmatic in the mirror. But I could have sworn she knew what I was thinking. I followed her up the stairs laughing to myself.
2
In the afternoon Stella went to lie down for an hour or two. I horsed around in the water for a bit. I was still thinking about the two men at the Bonefish Inn, and the exercise and the salt spray cleared my brain and what with the sun and the sea and a swell which had blown up it eventually went out of my mind. The water seemed even warmer than the morning; I borrowed a snorkel from the loan equipment stall in the hotel lobby and amused myself for an hour or two studying the fish.
There was a little red and white striped number that seemed to have taken quite a shine to me, and he stayed with me for more than half an hour, until I shook him off among the coral. I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t really cut out for this; I can swim pretty well so far as stamina and determination are concerned. I guess my range is about two miles, but I lack style and the crawl has never really been my type of thing. I can’t keep it up long enough and the trick of it has always evaded me.
I was just about tired of scrabbling about the coral and chasing fish which were never there, when something pink flashed across my field of view. I had on goggles, of course, as well as the snorkel tube and what with the flippers and all I was far from a figure of grace. So I took some while to adjust and while I was struggling to look back over my shoulder whatever it was had gone. I surfaced for air and when I went back down again, a shadow flitted across the striped bands of sun which went dancing through the water.
I followed on down behind a waving belt of weed and saw something dappled slide away behind the pink and yellow coral. I followed again but whatever it was, was making pretty good time and it wasn’t going to wait around for me. By the time I got there, a swirl in the water and a few bubbles formed the only trace.
I trod water. I wasn’t really thinking of danger or anything like that; my mind was on fish, but I shuddered more than somewhat when something caught my right ankle way down in the depths of the weed. It was a light but strong touch and as I went downwards, I was too surprised to react. Then the grip was relaxed and as I floated face downwards, something sharp and playful tickled the soles of my feet.
As I corkscrewed to the surface, the speckled shape went swirling up past me at terrific speed. I saw something like long strands of yellow water weed and spots danced before my eyes. As the shape passed within two feet of my face something waved almost derisively. I saw five small toes gleaming with pink nail varnish as the blonde job in the polka-dot bikini creamed her way effortlessly to the surface. It’s difficult under water, I know, but I could have sworn she was laughing.
When I broke water about half an hour afterwards she was just a splash of white, tumbled surf, almost inshore. I got to a raft anchored off the beach and flopped down to take off my gear. The sun was as keen as a knife blade up here. As I sat up and dashed the water from my hair, the blonde job stood up in the water at the edge of the beach. She waved and disappeared among the beach umbrellas with a long, athletic stride.
I didn’t bother to reply to her salutation. She couldn’t see me anyway. But I looked long and carefully at the place where she’d disappeared. I’m no Tristan but she sure looked like Isolde, or something around that price-range.
I’d brought my cigarettes and ligh
ter in a water-proof purse I’d stashed in a pocket of my trunks and I smoked and sunned myself for a bit before heading in to the beach. I thought about the blonde number and the two guys at the Inn, and Stella and Colonel Clay and a hundred other things that don’t concern the story.
Then, because the whole thing seemed a footling waste of time, I pitched the stub of my cigarette overboard, shifted over on to my face and dozed for a while. The slap, slap of the water hitting the edge of the raft dulled my senses and made a pleasant background, and the harsh, antiseptic rinse of the sun on my body was real good. I felt the coolness of the wet matting under my body and then I slept.
When I woke it was still hot but the best of the afternoon was gone. There were long, blue shadows on the beach and on the white, rocky hills that bordered the shore and a breeze had sprung up. I went off the raft in a long shallow dive, holding the snorkel kit in one hand and when I came up I amused myself by swimming face downwards, just under the surface of the water. The sea still retained the heat of the day and I was sorry that I only got around to this sort of thing about once every five years. A weekend at Santa Monica was more like my line, and then I usually ended up playing the horses.
When I got up the beach there was no sign of the blonde job or Stella, so I sat in a cane chair and smoked another cigarette and then went on up to my room. The plan for the guest apartments at the Catamaran was rather unusual; they ran up three or four flights, the rooms opening off spacious corridors. The apartments were built around a square, open to the sky at the top, something on the lines of an Elizabethan inn, and down below was a courtyard with multi-coloured flowers and a fountain playing in the middle. Shades of Old Seville and all that sort of stuff. But very nice, if you like that sort of thing.
I did and I stood on the balcony on my floor for a bit, finished my cigarette and just drank in the atmosphere. Stella’s room was a couple of doors down from mine and I debated whether to give her a tap, but decided to let her sleep on. There was no real reason for my disturbing her and she might be taking a bath or something.
Just before I went in to my room, I flicked my cigarette butt down into the basin of the fountain. Awfully bad form and all that, but I couldn’t entirely shake my bad manners of L.A. and the cigarette had left my hand before I gave it another thought. It described a fiery parabola in the air and shot a stream of sparks as it hit the fountain basin and bounced off into the water.
There was a scuttering in the foliage nearby as the sparks seemed to disturb somebody in the shadow, and a form in a grubby white drill suit hurried out into the centre of the courtyard. “Sorry,” I called down after him. Normally I don’t go in for that sort of refinement, but I was on holiday and courtesy costs nothing, like they say. He didn’t answer but went on up the staircase opposite. The plan of the hotel was such that anyone on the upper floors had to make the entire circuit of the corridors for the next flight so I stayed put.
Just idle curiosity, but I had nothing else to do, so I thought I’d see who he was. The figure came on round the flight below me and presently appeared again opposite, at the same level I was standing. He started off on another circuit and as he neared me, I saw he was a tall, spare-shouldered character with a crumpled red neck-tie. He looked unshaven and dirty, which was unusual for this class of hotel. He gave me an odd, haunted look from the comer of his eyes as he went by.
I watched him off; he turned his head once and then mopped at his neck with a far from clean handkerchief. He went up on to the third floor—the one above me—and presently I heard a door softly close in the silence. I shrugged and went on into my own room. I saw enough of nut-cases in L.A. without cultivating them on holiday.
3
When I came down to dinner the heat of the day had fined off to what was termed cool in this part of the world. It was no longer roasting, just sweltering. But the big fans in the dining-room were hard at work and with the windows open and a breeze coming off the sea I felt I might get through the evening. I went on into the main bar while I waited for Stella.
There was a three piece band playing samba rhythms over in a corner of the dining-room and half a dozen couples working off their excess energy on a pint-sized dance floor. I ordered a gin fizz with plenty of ice and watched the work-out. The blonde job I had seen at the Bonefish Inn in the morning was doing fancy steps with a man old enough to be her father; he had a long horse face, white moustache and silver sideboards. They danced like they were glued together and the expression on their faces wasn’t at all filial, so I guessed he wasn’t her father at that.
As an exhibition it wasn’t up to Vernon and Irene Castle so I turned back to the bar-keep and we chatted about this and that while I filled in time. He had come over from another island for the tourist season; in off periods he earned a living fishing, I gathered. The bar was a pretty elaborate place, though the whole of the Catamaran was lavish, considering it was only a medium-sized lay-out. One wall was taken up with a thirty feet tank filled with tropical fish; the thing was lit with lights which changed colour as the evening progressed.
It was all right early on when you had only one or two drinks but it could be murder when you’d sunk a lot under your belt, the evening was getting on and the lighting had reached the mauve cycle. The women weren’t so bad but the men’s faces were deadly; it reminded me of the Richmond Street morgue back in L.A. during the high season.
Just then I caught sight of Stella coming down the staircase; she had done something new to her hair and she looked as fresh as the morning. I meant her to join me at the bar but then I changed my mind. In the fish tank behind the bar-tender, elongated and even more massive among the writhing fish forms, I could see reflected a vast, pearl-grey shape that hadn’t been there a minute or two before.
I asked a passing waiter to bring a couple of drinks over to our table and went on into the dining-room to meet Stella. The big man in the grey suit—the one nine feet tall who didn’t drink paraffin—looked like he might know me, but I didn’t want to give him time to make sure. I didn’t see him again though and when I looked up half-way through dinner he had left the bar.
Afterwards I got the Caddy and we drove out to the point. We just sat in the car inhaling the fresh scent of wild orchid, orange blossom and all that sort of stuff. In front a moon rode high, slicing the edges of the palms and in front the silver of the Atlantic rode straight out for thousands of miles, its surface fretted and splintered into a million patterns by the soft breath of the Trades.
“Isn’t this gorgeous, Mike?” said Stella, her mouth close up against my face.
“Cook’s Tours and the world before you,” I said, my voice muffled by her hair.
“You’re just an old cynic,” complained Stella. “But don’t think that will spoil my holiday.”
It didn’t. When we sat up a few minutes later my tie was rumpled, my hair mussed and my nerves tingling all the way down to my socks. I lit a cigarette, thinking it more prudent and got out of the car to stretch my legs.
Stella joined me and we took a turn along the cliff edge. It wound down along the shore and eventually turned into a steep track leading through the dark shadowed undergrowth and the palms, to a secluded beach where white sand shone brightly even in this light. I thought it might be time to turn back. We stood for a moment looking idly down into the cove.
I had been watching a small boat for the past few minutes, which made its way like a water beetle, a black shadow trailing it, across the surface of the sea. There were two men in it and something seemed familiar about them, even at that distance. As we stood there the boat grounded ashore and the two men got out carrying something between them. There was no doubting what it was, even a quarter of a mile away.
“Stay here,” I told Stella.
“Mike, what are you going to do?” she called after me. It was a quiet night and her voice sounded a long way away.
I was already running down the rocky path in the dark and I cursed as I saw the two men look up. Th
ey hesitated and then dropped their burden. It sprawled like a dark star-fish at their feet. I zig-zagged through the palms, to come at them the shortest way across the sand, but it was already too late.
As I broke through into the moonlight, the oars grated in the rowlocks and the boat floated free across the surf and into the open sea. I put back my shoulders, dropped my coat and started off at a fast dive across the powdery beach when a light winked from the dark shadow of the boat, something whined off a stone and a great puff of sand spread in a scattering cloud half a dozen feet from me. I went down on to my face and stayed down.
You don’t carry Smith-Wessons on vacation and it would have been plain crazy to have tried anything with that sort of opposition. So I stayed put until I judged it was safe to move and when I put my head up I saw they were out of range. I got up then. I could see Stella down at the edge of the trees and she started picking her way towards me, until I waved her back. I waited until I saw she was well up near the car and then turned to see who had been left on the beach.
He was a tall, thin man in a white drill suit. He lay on his face, with his arms spread out, just as he had been dropped. There was no blood, no sign of a wound, but he was quite dead. I turned him over gently. It was my seedy friend with the red tie from the hotel courtyard earlier that afternoon. I can’t say why, but I wasn’t at all surprised. His face was colder than death and his hands gave off a chill more final than the tomb. I laid him reverently back again and stood up. Something broke off from one of his fingers and I examined it absently in the moonlight.
I looked thoughtfully after the miniscule form of the boat, bobbing among the wavelets, just rounding the point and I knew it would be useless to follow. They would soon be among the yacht anchorage where any one of half a hundred boats could be their destination. And anyway I hadn’t seen their faces. I went back up along the cliff and met Stella. She looked anxious.