The Damagers

by Donald Hamilton

  My new shipmate was trying to pull the clinging bunches of sodden cloth away from her legs. Her wet shirt, clearly expensive, with some nice embroidery down the front, was coming out at the waist, and her hair was escaping from her natty little sailor cap—well, some dainty landlocked designer’s idea of what a sailor cap should be.

  She gave up the futile attempt to resuscitate the drowned crease of her pants and straightened up to look at me. A strand of wet dark hair trailed across her face, and after trying instinctively to brush it aside, she made a little sound of annoyance and yanked off the cap and shook it all loose. Having a handsome long-haired woman release her confined locks artistically is always good for a small sexual charge; they invariably make it look like a surrender of sorts. I saw that the hair was really long, and glossy, and black…

  She’s got a figure that won’t quit… and black hair almost as long as Crystal Gayle’s, Lori had said. So I knew what I had, although I still didn’t know why I had it.

  “Mrs. Dorothy Fancher, I presume,” I said.

  12

  Lori Fancher’s stepmother said, “I think we can postpone getting acquainted until I’ve put on some dry clothes.” She picked up her two cases, large and small, and turned to go forward, to the cabin she’d occupied, according to Lori, when sailing with her husband.

  I said, “Hold it a minute.”

  “Mr. Helm, I’m sopping wet. Just let me go downstairs and…”

  I said, “I’m pretty damp, too, and it isn’t killing me. I don’t want you wandering around my boat until I’ve done a little checking. Just stand right there and drip on the carpet, if you please.”

  That brought a gasp from her. She drew herself up to protest, but aborted the angry words with an effort that was obviously painful. A lurch of the ship threw her off balance. She braced herself against the side of the deckhouse with the hand that held the cosmetics case. Steady once more—well, as steady as the antics of the boat allowed—she set down both bags and watched me tuning the VHF to a new channel. I picked up the mike.

  “Marine operator,” I said. “Marine operator, this is Lorelei III, Whiskey Alpha November 8855.”

  Like most boatmen, I’m sloppy about using the boat’s call sign when talking to other boats, but I feel constrained to identify myself properly, at least on the first try, when calling the Coast Guard or the marine operator, just in case somebody out there is feeling official.

  Waiting, I noted that the rain squall had passed. I switched off the windshield wipers. The big ships in the main channel—three in sight at the moment—were closer than they had been, but the loran computer said we still had thirty-seven minutes to go to Miah Maull Shoal at our present rate of progress. Backtracking to meet Bartender had cost us about an hour. However, we still had plenty of time to make Schaefer’s Canal House in daylight, if there were no more delays.

  The loudspeaker remained silent. I had the VHF tuned to the public correspondence channel listed for the area in the cruising guide I was using, but it was an older book, and those listings aren’t always up to date, anyway. Well, I couldn’t spend all day working my way through all the possibilities, but sometimes they monitor channel sixteen. I hit the button that put the set back into its original mode.

  “Marine operator, marine operator, this is Lorelei III.”

  Mrs. Fancher said, “I’m freezing to death. How long are you planning to make me stand here?”

  I remembered another cold, wet female who’d come into my arms in this deckhouse. Well, Lori seemed to have decided that she was better off away from me, smart girl. Any girl is better off away from any man in our line of work. I had no impulse to take the stepmother into my arms, which was odd, come to think of it. She was a good-looking woman with most of her feminine defenses washed away temporarily, but she didn’t do a thing for me, at least at the moment.

  I said, “I really doubt that hypothermia is imminent, ma’am.”

  She drew another sharp breath and started to speak hotly, but checked herself again, glaring at me. There was something familiar about her anger, reminding me of another dark-faced lady, not quite so voluptuous, who’d also considered sending me to the guillotine— well, the headman’s block—without anesthetic. This one was younger and sexier, but the smooth dusky skin and the big dark eyes were the same, definitely originating somewhere south of the Mediterranean. Mac had said Mrs. Bell’s maiden name had been Othman; I wondered what Dorothy Fancher’s had been. I remembered Lori’s words: Where she belongs is in harem pants… popping grapes into the fat sheik’s mouth.

  There was still no sound from the VHF. Either the operators were all on their morning coffee breaks, or they weren’t interested in channel sixteen, or the nearest station was out of reach for my old set. I stuck the mike back into its bracket; to hell with it.

  Mrs. Fancher asked, “Whom were you trying to call?”

  “The lady I’m working for currently. I had two questions to ask her, the first being if she’d sent you.”

  Mrs. Fancher said, “You could have asked me. I would have told you she hadn’t.”

  I said, “But if you’d told me she had, I’d have had no way of knowing you were lying.”

  “You’re working for that government snooper, Theresa Bell, aren’t you? Or should I call her a snoopess?” Dorothy Fancher laughed shortly. “Heavens, I wouldn’t let her send me across the street for a hamburger! Nobody sends me anywhere, Mr. Helm.”

  I said, “How nice for you. I keep getting sent to all kinds of oddball places, like the middle of Delaware Bay. Where did you meet Mrs. Bell?”

  “She was nosing around after my husband died… Two questions, Mr. Helm?”

  I spoke deliberately, watching her: “My second question was more of a request. I wanted to ask Mrs. Bell to make sure, since you were on board, that there was a thorough autopsy if I should be found dead on this boat of an apparent heart attack, like the late husband you just mentioned.”

  Dorothy Fancher stood quite still for a moment, staring at me. Then she made a sharp hissing sound—strangely, it didn’t put me in mind of a cat, but of a resident swan I’d once startled unintentionally in the Connecticut marina where I’d spent the last couple of months. It had responded with the same angry hiss, ready to go for me with its beak. Swans can be dangerous, lovely as they are; they’ve been known to kill children and dogs. The dark lady facing me didn’t bear much physical resemblance to a swan, but her impulses were similar: she took a quick step forward and tried for me with her nails. I blocked her strike left-handed, and put a short, hard, right-hand punch just below her ribs. She doubled up and went back against the corner settee and sat down hard on the end of it, hugging herself.

  “Thank you,” I said. Breathless, she gave me a furious, strangled look. I said, “I was looking for an excuse to demonstrate that I’m not a gentleman. Thank you for being kind enough to give it to me.”

  She was still incapable of speech, which was probably just as well. I took a quick look around. Nicky was still doing his job. We didn’t seem to be hitting anything, and nothing seemed to be hitting us. I stepped below just long enough to grab a large beach towel out of the locker in the aft head. When I returned, Mrs. Fancher was taking some short experimental breaths and rubbing her diaphragm area tenderly. I dropped the towel on the settee beside her.

  “Get undressed,” I said.

  She glared at me and managed to croak a few words. “My dear man…!”

  I said, “You wanted to get out of those wet clothes. So get out of them.”

  “If you think for one moment…!” Her voice was improving.

  I said, “Mrs. Fancher, this is not a debating society. I didn’t invite you on this boat; since you chose to come aboard, you’ll play by my rules. Either you strip or I’ll strip you. And if I have to knock you unconscious to do it, you’ll be out like a light before you know it.”

  She said scornfully, speaking without effort now, “Well, you’ve certainly proved that you haven�
��t any scruples about hitting a woman!”

  I grinned. “You dames want it all your own way. You can kick us and slap us and claw our eyes out, but just let us deliver one good, clean punch to the solar plexus and we’re unspeakable beasts. Well, what’s it to be?”

  I knew damned well what it was going to be. No woman with those eyes and that figure would ever be truly embarrassed about taking her clothes off in front of a man. In fact, she’d enjoy every minute of the performance—once she’d made the proper, modest, ladylike protests, of course.

  Dorothy Fancher got to her feet deliberately, facing me. She made quite a pretty production of unbuttoning and peeling off her wet shirt. She wore something flimsy under it that didn’t conceal the fact that her breasts were as impressive as those of the first lady who’d come aboard Lorelei III recently. I thought again about Lori, who was cute as a button but not particularly well endowed. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Mrs. Fancher had stepped out of her pumps. She didn’t seem to be wearing any stockings. Her ecdysiac performance was somewhat handicapped by the motion of the boat, and by the fact that there’s no really seductive way of climbing out of a pair of trousers—skirts can be disposed of much more sexily. But she got the job done with reasonable grace, and straightened up to face me in a one-piece silk-and-lace confection called, I believe, a teddy, don’t ask me why. With her long black hair, she was something to see in the cabin of a boat going downwind in that steep Delaware Bay chop with the autopilot working hard and the big diesel shaking the sound-absorbing hatches under our feet.

  I half expected her to ask to be allowed to stop there; but I didn’t know my lady. I’d asked for it and I was going to get it, the full treatment. Extricating herself from a few ounces of lacy wet lingerie took her longer than shedding shirt and shoes and pants—and the sad part was that the beautiful routine was pretty well wasted. I’ll admit to a few minor stirrings, but, dressed or undressed, she simply didn’t arouse me in any important way. Maybe, as a blond Scandinavian boy, I was a racist at heart— if heart was the proper word here—and just didn’t react to dark Mediterranean girls. Or maybe economical little Lori had spoiled me for the abundance that confronted me as the last vestige of clothing dropped away. But Lorelei III certainly did seem to be making a collection of spectacular ladies.

  I kicked the fallen clothes aside, and picked up the big towel, and put it into the woman’s hands. “Dry it off and cover it up while I do some piloting,” I said.

  We were approaching the main ship channel. I was aware of the woman behind me, toweling herself vigorously, angrily, as I studied the situation. A big tanker was coming toward us, heading down the bay to the ocean, and I didn’t want to have to worry about dodging it, or a freighter I saw coming the other way. A quick check of the chart told me that there was plenty of water for Lorelei III’s six-foot keel if I just ran a quarter mile or so outside the channel where the ships, much deeper, couldn’t go.

  When I turned from resetting the loran and the autopilot, Dorothy Fancher was wrapping the towel around her like a sari.

  “If Mrs. Bell didn’t send you, why did you come?” I asked.

  “Lori said you needed somebody. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Helm, robbing the cradle like that.” Dorothy Fancher laughed shortly. “No, she didn’t tell me. But it was obvious every time the child mentioned your name that she’d slept with you and was in love with you and wished to heaven she’d fallen in love with a nice normal cannibalistic serial killer instead. So of course I had to see this monster who had my pretty little stepdaughter in such a state; and she said you needed a crew.” She shrugged. “I’m not much of a sailor, Mr. Helm, I think it’s a very stupid sport, but I have steered a boat—this boat, as a matter of fact—and helped with the dock lines; and after all, what does it really matter to you whether or not I put poison in my husband’s soup?”

  “Did you?”

  She laughed again. “As the American children used to say in the school I went to: ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’” She took a precautionary tuck in the towel, which had begun to slip. “Since you don’t seem to want to take advantage of my nudity to rape me, dammit, may I put some clothes on, please?”

  “Just a minute.”

  I picked up the wet stuff on the floor and went through it. In the shirt pocket I found a comb, which I put on the table. In the pants, she carried a soggy wad of Kleenex, which I dropped into the wastebasket, a flat little leather wallet, which I tossed onto the chart table, and a small case holding three keys: a car key—Mercedes, if it matters—what looked like a house key, and a small ornate gold key that, when I tried it, opened up the dusty-rose cosmetic case.

  “It works on the suitcase, too,” the woman said.

  I asked, “Is there anything in here you absolutely need, Mrs. Fancher? Heart pills, insulin, anything like that?”

  “No, but all my makeup…”

  She stopped, as I hefted the case, glanced at her, dumped the contents onto the table, and examined the satin-lined interior. The supposedly secret compartment in the bottom was a joke; even the Coast Guard could have found the .25 automatic and its spare magazine. It was a real little sex pistol, nicely engraved, shinily nickel-plated, with gorgeous mother-of-pearl grips—the slipperiest stuff in the world to hold, but very pretty to look at. If you like pretty guns.

  “I suppose it’s no use for me to say that it wasn’t intended for you,” Dorothy Fancher said. When I didn’t speak, she went on. “I think you’re judging me on the basis of what Lori has told you. Please don’t forget that stepdaughters have hated stepmothers since the beginning of time.”

  There was no answer needed there. I checked the .25 and found that it carried a full magazine in the butt but no round in the chamber, a good way to leave it. I pocketed it, along with the extra magazine; then I picked a packet of hairpins from the pile of stuff on the table and laid it aside, scooped the rest back into the satin-lined case, gathered up the wet clothes and shoes on the floor, slid the port deckhouse door open, and threw it all into the sea. I heard her gasp behind me.

  “What in the world do you think you’re…!”

  Her voice trailed off as she realized that her belongings were gone and no protests or recriminations could bring them back. I spent a moment closing the boarding gate in the rail that I’d opened to let her come aboard. Leaving the deckhouse door open, I picked up the dusty-pink suitcase and put it on the little table. The key, which I’d retained, worked the lock, just as she’d said it would. I opened the bag. It held a lot of dainty garments that did not seem to have been designed for cruising in a small boat.

  I said, “Tell me what you want to wear. Something tough and practical, if you brought anything like that.” She didn’t speak or move. Her face was stony; clearly she wasn’t going to play my games anymore. I dug around a bit and said, “Okay, I’ll do the picking. Two outfits should do it; and I don’t think you’re going to need any dresses…”

  Even after I’d laid aside the stuff I’d selected, I couldn’t close the bag for the clothes that, no longer folded neatly, were overhanging the edges, but I hinged one part down over the other, clamlike, took it all across the deckhouse, heaved it out, and slid the door closed. Through the deckhouse windows I saw that the floating suitcase survived one wave but was swamped by the next. Some bright stuff remained on the surface, but it soon became waterlogged and disappeared from sight. Turning, I spotted the cap and sunglasses she’d laid aside after coming aboard. I checked them over carefully and added them to the stuff I’d saved out for her.

  Mrs. Fancher broke her stony silence at last. “I hope you’re enjoying yourself, Mr. Helm.”

  I said, “You’ll feel better, dressed. Or maybe I’ll feel better when you’re dressed.”

  She said sharply, “Funny joke! I seem to have about as much effect on you as a side of beef in a freezer. If it wasn’t for Lori, I’d think you were homosexual.” She let the towel drop and, watching me, found and ste
pped into a pair of panties. She grimaced. “It’s terrifying, the way the man can hardly contain his raging lust at the sight of my nude body! Are you going to tell me why you threw my things overboard?”

  I said, “If you like. I can think of only three possible reasons why you’re here, Mrs. Fancher. The first: you actually came to assist me in running the boat, as you claim. I’ll work on believing that, but since you obviously hate boats, and since I can think of no reason for you to want to help me, let’s try the next possibility: that you came to kill me.”

  “Why would I want to kill you?”

  I said, “Hell, I don’t know, but there have been two attempts on my life since I started on this job; why shouldn’t you be planning the third?” I shrugged. “There’s a lot of stuff on this boat you can use for homicidal purposes if you put your mind to it, but I pretty well know what it is, so I figure I can watch out for it. But I didn’t want to have to cope with any weirdo explosives or exotic poisons you might have brought with you, not to mention daggers and guns, and in order to make sure nothing like that was hidden on you, or in your luggage, I’d have had to pretty well rip everything apart, after which it would have been no good to you, anyway. So it seemed simpler just to deep-six it.”

  She’d picked the long-sleeved shirt, of the two I’d saved for her, and put it on. Now she held out a wrist; clearly I was supposed to button the cuff for her. I did.

  She said, “And the third possibility, Mr. Helm?” I said, “Well, unlikely as it may seem, you could have come aboard to seduce me.”

  13

  Mrs. Fancher had me button the other shirt cuff for her. Then she pulled one of the pairs of pants I’d selected, managed to fasten them up without my assistance, and stepped into the low white boat shoes I’d found in her suitcase. The white linen trousers were, like the pants she’d worn aboard, cut fashionably full, and the shirt was also a loose fit—I had a feeling that the voluptuous, dark lady was actually making a statement that had nothing to do with style, retaining some vestige of the flowing garments of the desert-dwellers from whom she sprang.