The Loni had once been prideful people. How many of them had tried to change their lot, first by reasoning with the white-eye brutes, then by fleeing, then by rebellion?
Butler thought of them and then of what the Loni, subjugated and beaten, had become even in their nature land.
He trod heavier on the gas pedal. In Norfolk, he drove to the city's bustling waterfront and parked his car in a now unsupervised parking lot near a small amusement arcade. Before he even left the car, the watery feel and smell of salt and brack coated everything. He could feel it working its way into the soft silk fibres of his light blue suit, as he stepped along the riverfront street.
He stopped near the piers and looked up and down the street, blinking and bright with neon lights for a half-mile in each direction. His man would be in one of three places.
The first bar was air-conditioned cold, and he felt the sweat on his body dry almost immediately as he stepped inside the door. It was a sailor's bar. A white sailor's bar. The tavern was filled with seamen, their clothes, their tattoos, the leathery but still un-tanned look of their faces and hands giving away their occupation. Heads turned toward him as he stood in the doorway, realizing he had made a mistake and this was not the bar he was looking for, but determined to brazen it out as a free man, first looking along the bar, then toward the tables, scanning faces.
"Hey, you," the bartender called. "This is a private bar."
"Yassuh," Butler said. "Jes' looking for somebody, boss."
"Well, you won't find him in here."
"Not a him, boss. A her. You see her, maybe? Big blonde woman with big titties. Wearing a little, short, red dress, way up high around the nice, fine, warm ass," He grinned, showing teeth.
The bartender sputtered.
Butler said, "Never mind, boss. She ain't here. But if she come in, you tell her to get her white ass home, 'cause her man gonna whomp her good iften she don't. You tell her, she don't get right home, and she ain't getting no more of this good stuff right here," Butler said, stroking the groin of his trousers.
There were a few muzzled mumbles. The bartender's mouth still worked, getting ready to talk, but before he could speak, Butler turned and walked out into the street, letting the heavy wood and glass door swing shut behind him.
He stopped here on the sidewalk and laughed, a full, roaring laugh that only a trained, intelligent linguist's ear could tell was punctuated by the Loni throat click of anger.
Then Butler turned and walked away down the block. It didn't feel so oppressively hot anymore. The heat felt good on his skin.
The second tavern was uneventful, but empty and he found his man in the third saloon he entered. The man sat in the back, his face cafe au lait light against the dark blue of his crisp tailored gabardine uniform. Despite the heat, he wore his braided jacket and his braided duck-billed cap, with the gold string work across the crown and bill.
The bar was noisy with black sailors and no one looked up when Butler came in or paid any especial attention to the black dude in the light blue suit. He was twice offered drinks by sailors as he walked the length of the bar and turned them down with what he hoped was a gracious shake of his, head, and finally reached the table where the ship's officer sat, drinking alone, a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch in front of him.
The officer looked up as Butler eased into the seat.
"Hello, Captain," Butler said.
"Why, Colonel Butler," the man said. "What a pleasure to see you." His tongue was a little thick in his mouth; he had been drinking too much, Butler realized with distaste. "It's been a long while."
"Yes," Butler said, "but now I have need of your services."
The ship's officer smiled softly as he filled his old-fashioned glass to the brim with Cutty Sark. He sniffed the smoky scotch, lifted it to his mouth, and then began to swallow it smoothly, slowly.
He stopped when the glass was half empty. "Why, of course," he said. "Same arrangement?"
Butler nodded.
The same arrangement meant $5,000 in cash for the captain of the Liberian-registered tanker. At least that was the polite fiction that Butler and the ship's captain maintained. The full truth was that the "same arrangement" meant that the captain's wife and mother and children who lived in Busati would continue to live there and not turn up dead in a ditch. This point had been made clear at Butler's first meeting with the captain ten months before; it had never been raised again since there was no need for it. The captain remembered.
"However," Butler added, "there will be a slight difference this time." He looked around the room to be sure no one was watching or listening. The small bar reverberated with the soul-screeching of the jukebox. Reassured, Butler said, "Two women."
"Two?" the captain said.
Butler smiled. "Two. But one will not complete the trip."
The captain sipped his drink, then smiled again. "I see," he said. "I see." But he did not see why he should carry two women for the same price he was paid for carrying one. Yet, neither did he see how he could raise the subject to Butler without risking serious trouble. Again, he said, "I see."
"Good," said Butler. "When do you sail?"
The captain glanced down at his watch. "Five o'clock," he said. "Just before dawn."
"I'll be there," Butler said. He rose from the table.
"Join me in a drink, Colonel?" the captain asked.
"Sorry, no. I never drink."
"Too bad. I should think you would. It makes life so much easier."
Butler put his big hand on the table and leaned forward to the officer. "You don't understand, Captain. Nothing could be easier than my life is now. Or more pleasurable."
The captain nodded. Butler paused a moment, almost challenging a comment, but when none came, he pushed away from the table, turned and left.
Butler's next-stop was a motel on the outskirts of the city, where he rented a room under the name of F. B. Williams, producing identification in that name, paying cash and rebuffing efforts by the motel clerk to engage him in conversation.
Butler checked the room. The door locks satisfied him. He tossed his small travelling bag on the bed and returned to the car.
For an hour, he cruised the streets of Norfolk, looking for a person. It had to be a special kind of person.
Finally, he found her. She was a tall willowy blonde with ashen hair. She stood on a corner near a traffic light in the time-honoured fashion of whores everywhere—ready to cross the street if a police car came along, but willing to stand there forever if the fuzz didn't come, or at least until the right kind of man came along in the right kind of car.
Butler saw her, quickly drove the rented Buick around the block, then timed it so that he rolled up in front of her as the traffic light turned red.
The girl looked at him through the windshield and Butler pressed the button that unlocked the car doors. The heavy, clicking sound was another universal signal. The girl came over, leaned on the door and stuck her head inside the open window, carefully glancing into the back seat first. She was just about the right size and age, Butler guessed. The coloration looked about right also.
"Want to party?" she said.
"Sure," Butler said.
"Go down for $ 15, straight for $25."
"You go all night?" Butler asked. He thought it odd that the words and phrases of the street came back to him so easily, almost as if they had never left his mind.
"Naah," the girl said. "All night's a bummer."
"Three hundred dollars make it more pleasant?" Butler asked, knowing that the figure was outrageous and could have hired the best efforts of any three girls on the block.
"You got three hundred?"
Butler nodded.
"Let's see it."
"Get in and I'll show you."
The girl opened the door and slid into the front seat next to Butler. The light was green and he turned the corner and pulled up into a spot near an all-night bookstand.