“Sign it correctly and it will be honored,” Hawk said. Dry. Matter of fact. Like an accountant demanding proof of a swindle sheet.
“Goodbye,” Hawk said. “Put the jig together as you go. No plan. No help. Good luck. Good night.”
“Good night,” I told the dead phone. “And thanks for nothing.”
Put the puzzle together as I went along. By guess and by God and play it by feel and by ear. Get into Haiti and get Valdez out — or kill him. Keep an eye on Lyda Bonaventure. See that she didn’t stage an invasion. See that nobody staged an invasion. Stay alive. Keep Lyda Bonaventure alive, because if I could get our asses out of this in one piece, both Hawk and the CIA wished to have long conversations with the lady.
Sometimes I wonder if my head is pointy. There must be easier ways of making a living than being a senior Killmaster!
I lit a cigarette and had a belt of Tom Mitchell’s bad booze and let out a minor groan and faced it. It looked like old Carter was going to cross the raging main, was going to make it on the high seas. Anchors aweigh.
I stuck my head out the door and whistled softly. Tom came out of the darkness, the .45 tucked into his belt under a fold of flab. He gave me that shanty Irish grin.
“Business all concluded?”
“Yeah,” I said sourly. “Business concluded and maybe me, too.”
He watched me. “A bad one, Nick?”
I nodded. “Bad enough, but nothing to worry you. Give me some sort of paper, form, whatever you got. I’ll make out a voucher for you.”
He shook his head. “No need to do that, Nick. Hell, man! We’re friends, buddies. I—”
I was feeling snappish. “Cut out the crap,” I barked at him. “It’s only the taxpayers’ money, and you’re going to earn it.” Then I grinned and nodded at the tax form he had been filling out. “Anyway you’re really paying for it — I’m only giving you your own money back.”
Tom took a bolt of his skull-popper and wiped his big mouth and grinned back and said, “Well, since you put it like that.”
He gave me one of his billing forms and I scrawled on it: For Services Rendered. $2000.00. I signed it NC and put a special little curlicue in the C so Hawk would know it was genuine.
I handed him the paper. “For that you’re going to stay up all night and do a little patrolling. If anyone, anyone at all, tries to get near the cruiser, by land or sea, you let off a couple of shots to warn me. Just warn me, you understand? Don’t go shooting anybody and getting your ass in a jam over something that doesn’t concern you. You got that?”
Tom smiled and nodded. “I got it. I also wish I had what you got on that cruiser.”
I stared at him. He gave his eyes a comic roll and said. “I walked out to the end of docking. She was singing. I didn’t see her, but the voice ain’t bad. Sounded like she was singing French?”
I patted his arm. “Remember what happened to the curious cat, old buddy. You just do your job and earn that two grand. Nobody gets close to the cruiser. I may hang around here tomorrow, 1 may not, but if I do the same applies. No snoopers. Only in daylight don’t do it with a meat axe, huh, or a gun. Invent something. Say we’ve got plague aboard.”
He was pouring himself another jolt of old pop skull. I declined. “I’ve got a hard night ahead of me.”
“I just bet.”
“Anyway you’re a married man. Didn’t you tell me in that letter that you got married?”
“Yeah. I got married.” He sounded glum. “Her name is Myrtle and she weighs close to 300 pounds by now.”
“Serves you right,” I told him. “You should have stood in the Marines.”
“Yeah. I should have. But I told you, Nick — I got too old.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks for everything, Tom. I may see you again, or I may not. I don’t know just when I’ll cut out. But thanks. And I’ll be depending on you tonight.”
He gave me a half salute. “No sweat, Nick. Not to worry.”
I left him staring after me. He still looked wistful.
The Sea Witch was dark except for a faint glow in the owner’s stateroom. She had the record player going softly, which didn’t surprise me; she was playing Ravel’s Bolero, which did, a little. But as I legged it over the rail and went forward toward light and music I decided that she knew what she was about — the original title of the Bolero was Danse Lascive, until the prudes made him change it.
I went softly through the deckhouse and down a companionway and stood in the door looking at her. This kid was something of a showman, and she knew how to use color.
She was stretched on the divan, a glass in her hand, a cigarette smoking blue between her fingers. She was wearing long white stockings and a white garter belt and that was all. Her large breasts, soft in repose, lay flat and tender along her rib cage. Her head was resting on the arm of the divan, arching back to show all of that long Modigliani throat. Her eyes were closed but she knew I was there.
Without opening her eyes she said: “You were a long time.”
“Just long enough to get things squared away,” I told her. “We’re all right for now, I think. Nobody is going to bother us tonight, anyway. And we won’t be here long.”
She waved her cigarette in the air like a smoky wand. “That’s good. That is nice to know. Now let’s not talk about that any more. We’re safe. Forget it. Have a drink or two and take off your clothes and come here to me.”
I scaled my cap at a chair and went to the little bar and had a Scotch, straight. It had sounded like an order, and I didn’t mind obeying. I agreed with her that it way safe, at least for a few hours. I had tossed her little pea shooter into the Hudson. Not that it mattered. Lyda had only one thing on her mind at the moment. When I had eased her pain— then was the time to watch her again.
I sipped at my Scotch as I undressed. I studied her. White on tan made a pleasing, and exciting, color scheme.
“Very fetching,” I told her. “White garter belt and stockings on dark skin. It is also a whore’s trick. I suppose you know that?”
She had closed her eyes again. She smiled and arched her neck and said, “I know that. Captain darling. I am a little bit of a whore, I suppose. Aren’t all women?”
“Beats me,” 1 said. “I don’t know that much about women.”
She was looking at me now. I was naked and I was ready.
Lyda stared at me for a moment, then she let out a long shuddery sigh and put down her glass. She crushed out her cigarette. “I knew it,” she said. “Somehow I knew it — that you would look like this with your clothes off. Come here, Nick. For God’s sake, come here!”
I went to the divan and stood beside her. She reached for me and stroked me lightly with her finger tips and then she kissed me and pulled me down on top of her. Our mouths met and her tongue was hot and coarse and moist as she probed my mouth and twisted and writhed under me.
She was a talker. “Oh, darling,” she said. “Oh, Captain Nick darling. Oh sweet, oh honey, oh my God, darling. Ahhhhh — ohhhhh — darling, darling, darling, darling—”
Yet she would not let me enter her. Not that way. Things got pretty rough for a time, because by now I was like a long chaste bull who spots a cow. Sex took over and what few brains I am supposed to have were fast being blotted out by the pleasure principle. During these bouts I usually keep a little cold part of my brain on guard, but tonight I didn’t think I needed it. I said to hell with it and let her ignite my rocket and got ready to blast off.
Lyda stopped talking and started biting. She took some pretty good hunks out of me and I didn’t feel a thing. I got a knee between her legs and tried to wedge them apart but she still wasn’t having any of that. She writhed fiercely, humping and arching, and suddenly she twisted from under me and rolled over on top of me.