Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  Sex had just about become a lost cause with me. There didn’t seem to be any way you could win with it. I had gone through most of the ages and stages. I had been young and ashamed and apologetic. I had been the wild unrepentant rogue with whom nice girls would do all kinds of things they would not do with their decent boyfriends who loved them. I had in Denver been wildly in love with and lived with one girl for a long time, and stepped out on her on the theory that what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. After that disaster, I had been the dedicated married man with Joanie, faithful for fifteen long years, and that hadn’t worked either. Sex and me had about had it with each other, in any non-mechanical, non-sensory way.

  My sleepy mind came forward with the theory that Kronitis was really Sonny Duval wearing a disguise, and would wind up owning all three of Sonny’s boats, too.

  I yawned. I took a nap in the slowly cooling late afternoon.

  Chapter 15

  WHEN I WOKE, IT WAS black dark and my watch said it was 10:15. I pulled myself up and sat on the edge of the bed in the dark.

  Dmitri’s taverna was all lit up and alive and loud and swinging, down across the vacant lot. Sonny’s caique was lit up now, and so were other boats in the harbor that were lived on. There was a feeling that people had come back to life and come out of their holes and were ready to play, now that the heat was gone and the night had come.

  I stepped out onto the open, unroofed bedroom veranda to breathe some night air and saw that the Agoraphobe was back. Apparently she had just pulled in. She was lit up and they were still jockeying her back and forth to moor her, and as I watched, a man rowed in in a skiff to the seawall to make fast her springline.

  I stood in the dark and watched. While the man in the skiff was rowing back, the big fat-bottomed captain, Kirk, went down and came up from below with nine or ten objects which looked like frozen fillets of beef sewn into white cloth, and packed them in a seabag. I knew enough about hashish to know that was exactly what it looked like in the bulk. Kirk with his big ass took the seabag down the hanging ladder and stowed it in the ship’s launch and took the launch in to the dock by the taverna. I was glad I had not turned on any lights.

  On board the men went on working. At the dock Kirk disappeared up the gravel walk on the other side of the taverna to the street above with the seabag, without ever coming into the wash of the taverna’s lights.

  Christ, these guys made it look so easy.

  I went back inside and made myself a drink from the bottle beside the bed and sat with it in the dark. Almost certainly Kirk was tied in with Girgis, supplying him. Did that mean that old Kronitis was working with them both and masterminding and financing the whole deal from afar? No, nobody as rich as Kronitis was going to be involved in a small-time smuggling operation with Girgis and Kirk. Chantal had never mentioned Kirk to me.

  I decided I would eat my dinner at Dmitri’s again tonight. As I walked out through the yard there was another hippie party going in Georgina’s garden. I walked along the seawall in the dark listening to it. But before I could even get to the taverna I was stopped by Sonny Duval’s big figure.

  “Hi, there. I’m back from Athens.” He made it sound like a world-shaking event.

  “So I see.” I dug in my pocket. “Here’s your keys.”

  “Did everything work out with the boat?”

  “Yeah. Fine. I didn’t damage it.”

  “I see you cleaned it up great.”

  “I always do that.”

  Sonny moved his leonine head. “I’ll bet you do, at that.”

  “Did you get your girl all right?” I made as if to go on. I wanted a quiet dinner by myself, and some thinking about the island. But Sonny fell into step with me.

  “Naturally. I had to have a talk with Con Taylor, though. Say, I’d like to have a talk with you.”

  I was already edgy. That made it more. Being asked to “have a talk” with somebody always boded something ill. I had forgotten in a day just how childish, how kid-like he could be.

  “Yeah?” I said. “What about?”

  “Oh, several things.”

  Great. Have a talk. About several things. That boded even iller. We had reached the taverna. I took a table that was empty, down by the water, and motioned for the waiter.

  “Do you mind?” Sonny said, and sat down too.

  They were all doing it to me, it looked like. I must have something.

  “Would it matter if I did?”

  He only grinned. “Anyway, I had a long talk with Con.”

  “What did you do? Beat him up?”

  “That’s what you would have done.”

  “Maybe. And maybe not,” I said. “It depends.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Nothing like that. But you don’t understand. I don’t think a man ought to threaten a girl with committing suicide to make her stay with him. Do you?”

  “Did Con do that? He doesn’t seem like that type.” Sonny put up his hand. “And that’s not the way Georgina tells it,” I finished anyway.

  “Naturally that’s not how Georgina tells it.” He paused. “And you mustn’t tell Georgina what I’ve just told you.” He put the hand on my arm to emphasize what he’d just said; and he looked in my eyes, assuring himself of my essential human honesty and decency.

  After he assured himself, he went on to explain that he had decided he and Jane would just ignore the whole thing. They would be polite to the Taylors, they wouldn’t cut them or anything, but they wouldn’t run around with them like they used to.

  “By the way, where is Jane?” I said. People always acted so predictably, in situations. Sonny was going to be one of the civilized ones.

  “She’s on the boat. I thought she ought to stay on board a few days.”

  “Punishing her, hunh?”

  That made him angry. “No. I’m not punishing her. I don’t punish Jane. All that is old hat crap, man. This is the new age, man.” His face seemed to clear. “But what do you thing about that solution? What I said?”

  I was getting seriously irritated. They couldn’t any of them get it through their heads that I didn’t care about their alliances and misalliances. Besides, the waiter had been standing there patiently waiting for my order, and now had gone away without it.

  “Look. I’ll tell you what I think. I think all of you people are crazy. Everybody on this whole island. I think there’s something wrong with the water on this island, or something. When people go to bed together, they’re taking a big chance on getting involved with each other. Period. Nine times out of ten they do get involved. At least, one of them does. Unless they’re paying cash for it. And even then they get involved. No ‘new age’ or new phony philosophy is going to change that.”

  “We already have changed that.”

  “No you haven’t. If you think you have, you’re kidding yourself. Now, go away and let me eat my dinner, will you?”

  “But we have changed it. You talk like a man out of another century. You’re not much older than me. Wake up, man. Get with it.”

  I tightened my lips and took a breath. “Possession,” I said calmly. “The desire for possession. It’s not that easily eradicated. You can’t just whistle it away. A couple of badly written phony manifestoes aren’t going to change it.”

  “It’s starting. Today the university, tomorrow the world!” He raised his arm with the fist clenched, and laughed.

  “Horse shit,” I said. “Listen. Will you bug out? And let me eat? Just bug out.”

  “Don’t get sore, don’t get sore.” He got up placatingly. “I’ll talk to you later, when you’re in a better mood.”

  I didn’t answer this, and he started away. I signaled the waiter. “I’ll see you early tomorrow morning,” I called.

  The dinner was the same lamb stew goop, heavy with grease. This time heavily hottened with cayenne. I liked the cayenne. But the tomato and goat cheese salad was good. Afterward, I stood out on the dock a while. Lights were on on Sonny’s caique. Lights and music
came from Georgina’s yard, and the basement apartment. I stood looking at them all and thinking.

  I had almost an hour and a half to kill. Down beyond Dmitri’s, behind a spur of land which hid it, was another night club. The music thundered across from it out of amplifiers to me on the dock. I turned and walked down that way. It was only a short walk. Beyond the spur was a brackish inlet along which were built all the shipbuilder’s sheds. One of these doubled as the night club at night.

  The huge double doors were rolled back, to make the stage. Chairs and tables were set up on the gravel haulway, which was tilted slightly, between the doors and the water. A trio of young Americans was playing terrible folk rock music as I walked in. Not many of the tables were occupied, only three. At one sat Girgis, all slouched down beside his new blonde. At another Jason the recording “star” from Paris was seated with two hippie boys and one girl. At a third Sweet Marie the diver was sitting with a sloppy-dressed hippie.

  I hesitated, and almost left. Then I thought better of it and took a table and ordered a drink.

  As it was being served, a tall long-haired figure came around the end of the boathouse on the path and into the light, and stopped coolly to look the place over. As if spotting what he wanted, he looked directly at me.

  He was a man I had seen around, perhaps even been introduced to. Maybe he had been at Georgina’s the other afternoon. His long hair was rather elegantly parted on the side and hung in loose waves clear to his shoulders. There was an unusual elegance about all of him. He had the Gould mustache, and his full beard was cropped close. Even in that light he seemed to have brilliant eyes. These were still directed at me; but instead of coming over, he turned his head languidly and spoke to someone behind him and two women followed him into the light.

  The man led them in without looking back. He moved leisurely through the tables across the gravel. The women were clearly a mother and daughter. The girl was barely sixteen. Neither had anything like the elegance and self-possession of the man. He led them to a table at the far end. And looked over at me again.

  People who stare at me get my hump up. I was thinking of going over and saying something to him.

  But just then Sweet Marie got up from her table and her hippie and came over toward me. She was still tall, still wide-shouldered, still long-legged, still sweet-looking like her name. She was still beautifully built. She didn’t walk like any model. She walked more like some kind of great blue crane. But with her equipment she didn’t have to walk like any model.

  I decided I liked her even better this way than in her wet suit.

  I relaxed back into my chair.

  Chapter 16

  MARIE STOPPED AND STOOD in front of my table on her long legs, smiling. There was a constant tremor in her smile. She had on just blue jeans and a cotton shirt. No underpants, no bra. But what her body did to blue jeans and a cotton shirt made them look like something else.

  “Hi there! Mind if I sit down?”

  I pushed a chair out with my foot. “Help yourself. Watching you come over here, I understand why they call you Sweet Marie.”

  She blushed. “That’s sweet. Thanks. But I don’t feel very sweet right now. Actually, they call me that because I say the word sweet a lot. Just like now I did.” She must have been all of 22.

  “What’s on your mind?” I said.

  “I wanted to apologize. I’ve been thinking about you all afternoon since I met you, and I guess I seemed awfully distant out there today, and I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t give it a thought.”

  “But I couldn’t get you out of my mind. You seem to like skindiving so much, and you seemed to know so much about it. Why don’t you do more of it?”

  “You have to be where there’s water.”

  “You could do it here.”

  “Not in shape. About the time I got back in shape for it, I’d be leaving.”

  Behind us at the tall man’s table there was a sudden explosion of loud argument. Both of us turned to look, in time to see the older woman get to her feet shouting. The tall man casually got to his feet too, but without talking.

  The woman continued to shout. The words “fucking son of a bitch,” in female voice, came out clear from amongst the gabble. Then the woman drew back and punched him in the side of the head with all her strength. She did not look like any weakling, but it didn’t even faze him. Shouting, the woman collected the girl, her daughter, who had been sitting and wringing her hands, and marched her off across the gravel to the path. The tall man sat back down calmly and picked up his drink.

  “She ought to pick on somebody her own size,” I said. “Who is that guy?”

  “Oh, that’s just Pete,” Marie said. “Don’t you know him? That’s a weird story. He came here the tail end of last summer, all alone. No friends. He had quite a bit of loot. He met her and the daughter, and started balling the mother. The mother liked the loot. The daughter was just a kid. Then the daughter suddenly grew up. Meantime, he spent the loot. And the old lady got drunk in all the bars with the fishermen. And Pete started balling the daughter. Now the old lady has found this other fisherman who has money, apparently. But she doesn’t want to let Pete have the daughter, anyway.”

  “And Pete has descended to being a hash runner for some of the local talent,” I said. I remembered him now. “Georgina mentioned him to me. Georgina tells me everything about everybody.”

  Marie smiled at me. “What did she tell you about me?”

  “Well,” I said, drawling it. “You’re a hash runner yourself. For Girgis. In the summer season. You sell the fish you catch. You make enough to live. You stayed here all last winter.” I stopped, and didn’t go on. “That’s all.”

  “That’s all she told you?”

  “All I seem to remember.”

  “She didn’t tell you I’d slept with everybody on the island? Boys and girls alike? And in gangs and groups?”

  “I don’t seem to remember that.”

  “I think you’re just being sweet to me, Mr. Davies.”

  “What’s wrong with being sweet to you?”

  “Nothing. I’m just not so used to it, is all.” She went on smiling, and it was an easy, unforced smile. “Anyway, that’s the way they usually say it.” In fact, her wording had been almost exactly Chantal’s wording. “And the thing is, that’s all true. Or close enough. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty big rep to hold up.”

  She shrugged, and just smiled. “Well, the locals help me out a lot.”

  “I’m more interested in this hash running you do.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing much. I know most of the students—”

  “Are they all students?”

  “No. Some are. And Girgis has a thing about not being seen with what he calls heepies. So I deliver for him. And he pays me a good bit.”

  “And Kirk supplies him?”

  “Yes. In the summertime. There’s a much greater demand in the summer with all the kids here. Girgis brings it in himself when he can, but he has a lot of other work to do with the tourists. So Kirk brings it in in the Agoraphobe.”

  “Nice straightforward way of making a little money.”

  “It is.” Marie smiled that easy, but always tremulous smile. “But I’m more interested in you. You know, you ought to do it a lot more. Diving, I mean. Why don’t you do it all the time?”

  “You’re the second person today to tell me that.”

  “I mean it. I mean, why don’t you quit your job, whatever it is—as a detective—and just go skindive? If you love it so much.”

  “Responsibilities,” I said laconically.

  “You’re married?”

  “Wife and two kids.”

  “Well, at least you’re married and have kids.” There was an open sad look on her face, suddenly. She was as incapable of hiding her feelings, apparently, as she was of not feeling them. “That’s a lot. Don’t knock it.”

  “Except I don’t even have that.”
/>   “Divorced.”

  “Yeah. But I still got to pay.” I smiled my rueful smile. “You wouldn’t want me not to put my two girls through school?”

  “You’ve got two girls?” Then, as I nodded, “You know, you probably won’t believe this—and it’ll probably make you mad—but one of the reasons I couldn’t get you out of my mind after I saw you today is that you made me think of my father. I bet that makes you mad.”

  I pursed up my mouth in mock pain. “Well, not really. Was your old man a cop, you mean?”

  “I’m glad you’re not mad. No, no. Not that. He wasn’t a cop.”

  “Well, that’s something to be thankful for,” I said.

  “It wasn’t because you were a cop. It was just your—your you, the you I was talking to, made me think of him.” Suddenly her mouth quivered. “You really made me think of my daddy so much, Mr. Davies. And just suddenly it all came flooding back.” Her mouth made that quiver again. “I’m from California. But my folks come from Iowa.” Her voice went off up higher, nearly broke. “And it just came roaring back. My dad, and the house, and the yard, and the block, and the kids on the block, and my school, and—I haven’t had you off my mind since I saw you.” She dashed her hand quickly under first one eye then the other.

  “Here, now, here, now,” I said. I had been warming to this girl very swiftly. Suddenly I had a flutter of panic. “What is this, some new kind of a come-on?”

  “That’s not very sweet, Mr. Davies,” Marie said. She managed a tremulous smile.

  Her face seemed to have split wide open right in front of me. She was letting everything all hang out, as the kids loved to say.

  Either this girl was living daily just an inch from going over the edge at every second, or she was driving on a set of frayed retreads for nerves, or she was capable of turning herself on and off like a faucet for reasons of her own.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s not. I apologize. The truth is, I am old enough to be your father. Give or take a year.”