“I rather thought that was it,” she said, all soft and sweet and reasonable. “As a matter of fact it isn’t anything new, this attitude. Steve Bennett told me the same thing.”
“He was so right,” I murmured.
“Bennett was my contact with the CIA, as you know. I don’t know what really goes on, any of the inner workings, or why you people — AXE? — are taking over from the CIA, but I do know that Bennett and I made a deal. A bargain. Are you going to honor that bargain, Mr. Carter?”
I was non-committal. “Depends on the bargain. What did you and Bennett agree to?” I knew, because Bennett had filled me in briefly, but I wanted to hear her version.
She was behind me again, rubbing those cool fingers over the back of my neck. “I was to call off any invasion attempt, not to try it, and the CIA was going to go into Haiti and bring out Dr. Romera Valdez. You know that Papa Doc kidnapped him, right out of Columbia University, and has been holding him for five years?
I knew. She was telling it about the way Bennett had told it to me. Yet I had to stall her. I couldn’t make any firm committments until I had talked to Hawk. And Hawk, of course, had to get clearance from The Man.
Still I wanted to keep her happy and keep her from trying any monkey business while I sorted this thing out. Those bogymen had loused up a lot of things when they started shooting.
I said: “I think we are going to honor that bargain, Miss Bonaventure. I say think, because I can’t make you an absolute promise at this time, but the chances are pretty good that we will try and get this Dr. Valdez out for you. But you will have to be patient. A deal like this takes time to set up — otherwise we’ll just get our heads shot off the way so many of your friends have. You have any idea how many invasions of Haiti have been tried in the past ten years?”
I didn’t know the exact number myself, but there had been a lot. All failures. Papa Doc was pretty tough on his own turf.
She massaged my neck. “Bunglers,” she said. “Fools and cowards and half wits. Cretins! It wouldn’t have been that way with my invasion.”
I liked her use of the subjunctive mood. Maybe she was going to play it my way after all.
I said: “So let’s leave it that way for now, huh? You be a good girl, be patient, and leave everything to me. I’ll see what can be worked out and 111 do it fast. Like tonight. But you keep your nose clean, honey. No tricks and no double-crosses. You try anything with me and I’ll have you in jail and this boat, and cargo, confiscated so fast you won’t know what hit you. Deal?”
She nuzzled my ear. She put her tongue in my ear and then she bit it a little. “Deal,” she whispered. “To tell you the whole and entire truth, Mr. Carter, right now I am not very interested in an invasion of Haiti or even in Dr. Valdez. Later I will be again, but I never mix business with pleasure, and that is a thing that works both ways. Just now I am fascinated by the pleasure principle. Your pleasure and my pleasure. Our pleasure. I believe that as soon as possible we should inflict pleasure on each other to the very limit — as much as each can bear. What do you say to that, Mr. Carter?”
The lights of the Croton Yacht Club slid past to starboard. It wasn’t far now to Tom Mitchell’s marina. I craned my head back to stare up at her. Our faces were very close. For an instant I had the impression of a beautiful African mask hanging in midair: hair dark and smooth-glinting back from the high, pale, tan brow; eyes wide-set and long and umber with yellow pin wheels swirling in them: the nose straight and fragile and the mouth a trifle wide and full lipped and moist red with teeth glistening like porcelain mirrors. She moved to press her large tender breasts against me.
“Well, Mr. Carter?”
I nodded up at her. “Deal,” I said. “Within limits Mr. Carter is a yea-sayer beyond compare.”
She made a mock frown. “No limits! I do not like limits. I do everything to you and you do everything to me. Deal?”
We both laughed then, a spontaneous explosion that sounded wild in the April dark. I moved my face against her breast. “Deal, Lyda! I only hope you’re up to it. I can play pretty rough when I get started.
She bent to kiss me. Her mouth was hot and moist and she thrust her tongue into my mouth for just an instant and then took it away.
“So do I,” she told me. “So do I play rough, big man. And now I am going to go mix some more martinis. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She went and I wondered. I thought the sex bit was genuine — she was a passionate girl and she was aroused and she had to do something about it — but you can never be a hundred per cent sure. Women are born knowing how to sucker men, and Lyda Bonaventure was no different. In any case it didn’t really signify — if she did have a genuine case of hot pants she would be just as tricky, as dangerous, after I cooled her down. Maybe more so, because the sex thing would be out of the way for a time and she could concentrate on skullduggery.
Just what skullduggery I didn’t know, but she would probably come up with something. Right now she needed me. She was afraid of the Tonton Macoute—more so than she was letting on — and at the moment I was her best chance of survival. That shoot-out at the voodoo church had been pretty convincing. It sure as hell convinced me and I don’t scare as easily as most.
Another thing was that I knew her secret — I was sitting square in the middle of about a million dollars worth of boat and illegal arms — I hadn’t begun to explore that angle yet but I knew they were there — and I was the only insurance she was likely to get. All in all, I thought, I should be able to trust her for a time. Like the next few hours.
She came back with the drinks and we clinked our glasses and drank. The Sea Witch rounded a point and I saw the dim lights of the Montrose Marina ahead. The yellow dock lights showed a couple of small cabin cruisers and a yawl, nothing else. It was still a little early in the season for the real trade.
I finished my drink and put the glass on the deck. “Just for the record, Lyda, who owns this boat? What about the papers?”
She was lighting cigarettes for us. “Everything is in order there. She’s registered to a Donald Campbell who lives in Stamford and works on the Stock Exchange. He doesn’t exist, of course.”
“Where are the papers, just in case?”
“In a drawer in the stateroom. You want them?”
I shook my head. “No. Not tonight, but maybe later. I know the guy that owns this marina. We won’t have any trouble here.”
She put a cigarette in my mouth. She ran her fingers over my chin and felt the slight stubble.
“Don’t you shave,” she told me. “I like men to have a little beard sometimes.”
I said that shaving had not entered my mind.
“Please do whatever it is you have to do and get it over with,” she said. She patted my cheek. “And hurry back. Lyda is getting a little impatient.”
That made two of us.
Chapter 4
I brought the Sea Witch alongside a floating dock, and Lyda tossed a line to the kid who had come out to greet us. He was a skinny kid with a bad case of acne and hair cut reasonably short. I cut the engines and went forward to handle the bow line. When the cruiser was well snubbed in I told Lyda to stay aboard and keep out of sight.
“Go easy on the booze,” I added. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
“Yes, Captain darling.”
The kid was staring and probably having nasty thoughts, so I took his arm and we crossed the duck-boarding to the main pier and I said, “Is Tom Mitchell around?”
“Yes, sir. In the office. Usually he ain’t here at this hour, but tonight he stayed late. Taxes or something.”