In the sudden, deep silence, he stared wildly from face to face, shamed and ridiculous, his great moment turned inside out with bitterness and defeat.
I was turning to go. I might have been able to walk away from it. But a man broke the silence with a laugh. A woman giggled. The laughter was contagious.
Then a woman added a new note to the rising laughter. She screamed. This was contagious also. The people began to spill backward, to jostle each other as they attempted to get out of the way.
I spun, saw light glinting on the long blade of the saber that Sigmon had grabbed from one of the Gasparilla pirates. The tip of the blade was reaching to divide my belly button in two parts.
I sucked in breath, twisted to one side, and folded my body out of the way.
The rush from the center of the action became chaotic. I heard a man trip and fall into the courtyard fountain. In the perimeter of my gaze, I saw a woman get stepped on as she fainted dead away.
These were secondary impressions. Anything other than the sight of the long steel blade was secondary.
Sigmon’s rush had carried him past me. He was turning, the saber swinging up. It was no toy but the genuine article, probably an antique sword with a real history of pirate blood. A little something extra for the owner to keep shined up for the day each year when the owner put on his pirate’s costume.
Sigmon’s drunken sense of outrage had passed the point of sanity. He was beyond knowing or caring that I might shoot him. Nothing was real to him right now except the face of a hated man who had humbled him.
I ducked under his two-handed swinging of the saber, heard the swish of it. Before he could get the weapon set for another try at laying the side of my face open, I drove in low and hard.
My shoulder hit him, and I discovered he was as soft in the gut as I’d thought. I felt the air rush out of him and heard the muffled scream it left in his throat.
His body folded across my back. He went backward, and I fell on top of him.
I shook free of him and got to my feet. Clutching his stomach, he rolled back and forth a time or two. Then in the upper stratum of queazy sickness and pain, he saw the hovering outlines of my face.
His face twisted in raw fear, he scrabbled himself around, got his hands and knees under him, and started crawling away.
The target was too exposed, the temptation too great. I drew back my foot, and kicked him squarely in the tail. The force of it knocked him flat again, on his face this time. His fingers clawed at the flagstones as he tried to pull himself beyond my reach.
He needn’t have worried. He wasn’t worth further bother. I bent, touched the saber where it had clattered to rest. I picked the weapon up, studied it a moment while the hushed faces scattered around the courtyard watched.
Gripping the saber by the tip and haft, I raised my knee and brought the sword down across it. The way it rang when it snapped attested the quality of the steel.
I pitched the pieces of broken saber. They struck flagstones near Keith Sigmon with a clatter.
I turned and walked away. As I passed from the lighted area of the courtyard, I heard the timorous return of life back there. Rustling movement. The sound of voices.
Sigmon was being helped to his feet. Elena was suggesting drinks all around.
Fingers began falling on a bongo like warm, fat, tropical raindrops.
Fourteen
When I got back to my car I saw the shadowy outlines of a person in the front seat. The dome light turned on as I opened the door on the driver’s side.
Myrtle Higgins leaned across the seat, looking up at me. A smile curved her full, red lips. “Hi,” she said casually.
With her firm-cheeked face and full-breasted, amazonian body, she was a pervasive presence that took some of the tension out of my shoulders. I slipped under the wheel beside her. Half-turned, she rested with her elbow on the back of the seat. “You know something,” she said, her voice suddenly serious, touched with a feeling akin to fright, “old José Gaspar would never have taken you in his crew.”
“No?”
“It would have cost him sleep, worrying about you breaking him in two and taking command.”
I looked at the lusty, surface perfection of her physical shell. “I wish I knew you better.”
“Remember the other night,” she said softly. “How much better can a man know a woman?”
“You know what I’m talking about. I don’t know you at all. Not the Myrtle Higgins who waits and hides behind the eyes.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said, straightening in the seat.
“Okay,” I said. I gave her a glance. “Going to the party?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ve been rambling around, looking for you.”
“So now you’ve found me.”
“Sure — and who wants to go to Elena Sigmon’s silly party?” Her smile was back. She was trying for a mood of casual ease, lightness. “I got here in time to see the finish of the fight after I’d spotted your car. Don’t you think we’d better get away from here?”
“Why?”
“Sigmon has grounds to swear out a warrant for you.”
“I don’t think Sigmon wants any cops around,” I said.
“Let’s get moving anyway.” She stirred restlessly. “I need to move, to talk, Ed.”
I started the car, turned it around, and followed the headlights through the warmly dark jungle landscaping.
“Ed... I heard about Lura Thackery on a newscast.”
“I’ll feel bad about that one a long time,” I said.
She looked at me quickly. “You shouldn’t. The girl was a fool. She brought it on herself.”
“Did you know her well, Myrtle?”
“Not very. Just as a friend of Jean Putnam’s who came to the hacienda occasionally to see Jean. Old Señora Isabella didn’t much like to have Lura around.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Myrtle said. “I think Lura reminded the old lady of her own daughter.”
“In what way?”
“They were both weak,” Myrtle said. “The old woman regarded her daughter’s marriage and subjection to Keith Sigmon as the height of human weakness and folly.”
I reached the boulevard and waited for a break in traffic.
“Anything personal between the old woman and Lura Thackery?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. The señora was courteous to Lura. She was too well versed in the social graces not to be. But she was always distant with the girl, as if her wise old instincts were solidly set against Lura.”
I gunned the car and shot onto the boulevard.
“Got a cigarette?” Myrtle said.
I handed her a package, pressed the car lighter.
“As the old woman’s nurse,” I said, “you were probably closer to her than anyone in Tampa.”
“I wouldn’t be sure. There was her doctor — and Jean Putnam. I think Jean was the closest of all. Jean seemed to fill a little of the inner void the old woman had brought with her from Venezuela.”
“But even Jean didn’t see and talk with the señora in moments of pain, in the small hours when she was suffering.”
Myrtle watched the sweep of lights and darkness. “Part of a nurse’s job, Ed,” she said quietly.
“So you heard words from her that not even Jean Putnam ever heard.”
She stirred, turning partially toward me. “What do you want of me, Ed?”
“I’m not sure. A word, maybe, that the old woman spoke when the night was deep and the pain was heavy.”
“I wish I had a word, Ed.”
“Or a fact. A detail that hasn’t come to light yet.”