Hake looked down at her, almost embarrassed. Apart from the straps for the air tanks, the woman was wearing very little—la minima, it was called—a brightly colored triangular scrap of cloth below her navel, held by thin cords, and nothing above. “Get in, for God’s sake,” he said.
“I’ll get you all wet and oily.”
“Get in, get in!” He leaned to starboard while she climbed in from port, and they managed to get her aboard without tipping over. They regarded each other silently for a moment before he demanded, “What are you doing in Italy?”
She threw her hair back and wiped oil from her face. “Better things than you are, at least. I never thought you’d be pushing drugs.”
“Drugs?” But even as he spoke, he knew he did not doubt her.
“That’s right, Hake. That’s what your bunch is up to. I’m willing to believe,” she conceded, “that you didn’t know it, because I don’t think it’s your style at’all. But there it is.” She turned to study the empty cave entrance for a moment. “I have ten minutes, no more,” she added. “Then you stay here for a while and I’ll go. Don’t try to follow me, Hake. I have friends—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Look, first things first. Are you sure about the drugs?”
“Bloody damn sure,” she said. “The Italian cops put one of your boys away for it yesterday. Stopped him in that galleria in Naples, with a satchel full of Xeroxed directions for making angel dust.”
“I never heard of angel dust!”
“What they call pay-chay-pay. PCP. It’s an old drug, comes back every twenty years or so—when a new generation comes along that doesn’t know what it can do to you. One or two shots can screw up your head forever. Thing is, it’s the easiest thing in the world to make. Any high-school kid can put it together in Mom’s kitchen if he has the directions. Your boy was selling the recipe to all the ragazzi in Naples—until one of them finked to the fuzz.”
They were drifting close to the wall of the cave. Awkwardly Hake sculled them a few yards farther away, while Leota watched with amusement. He said doggedly, “I don’t want to call you a liar, but I didn’t think the, uh, the group I’m involved with would do anything like that. How do you know this person worked for us?”
“Oh, I know. Who do you think alerted the Italian narcs to plant the kid in the galleria? You want the details?” She leaned back against her air tanks and recited: “Dietrich Nederkoorn, comes from a little fishing village in Holland, deserted the Dutch Army three years ago, worked for your boys ever since at one crummy thing or another. About twenty-five. Gay. Beatle haircut. Blue eyes, black hair, freckles, medium height.”
“Yeah,” Hake said slowly. “I saw him in Germany. But why would we do a thing like that?”
“What I’ve been asking you all along, Hake. I don’t mean why they would. I mean why you would. For the gorillas you work for, sure, it’s tailor-made. Very cost-effective. It’s like a bite of the apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Once you get it started, it runs itself. By now there must be a million of those circulars in Italy. If Nederkoorn weren’t such an asshole he wouldn’t be in the slammer now. The process was already on the way. There’s no way in the world the Italian narcs, or anybody else, can catch up with all those leaflets and all the copies that are being made. So there goes a whole generation of Italian kids. Thousands of them, maybe millions, are going to be showing up for work stoned out of their heads from something they scored two weeks back—• if they show up at all. It’s a big success, Hake. The government’s got an all-out drive against it right now, school assembly programs, TV commercials, rock stars traveling the country to campaign against it—for all the good that’s going to do,” she said bitterly. “What kind of human being does a thing like that?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Hake said unhappily. Well, part of it he could have told her. The obsession that caused Mario and the others to practice their petty harassments with fuse-blowers and tiny floods was enough to explain Dieter’s being unable to stop. But— “But I don’t know what I’m doing in this,” he said. “All I’ve done is sit around.”
She stared at him. “You didn’t know? Oh, Christ, Hake. The reason they brought you over here was to put the finger on me.”
“I never said a word!”
“No, Hake,” she said, with no anger in her tone, “I’m sure you didn’t. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t. You’re dumb, yes. But not treacherous. You didn’t have to. Your tickle-taster took care of it for you.”
“What the hell’s a tickle-taster?”
“You’re wearing it right now, Hake.” She pointed to his silver wristlet. “Works sort of like a polygraph; it monitors your pulse and blood levels. All they had to do was wait until you went boing on the taster, and then see who caused it. Which was me. I knew they were close. They could figure I had to be working at one of three or four places on Capri, and all they had to do was plant you in them one after another until I turned up. Oh, Hake,” she said, actually smiling, “don’t look so guilty\ They would’ve got to me sooner or later.”
Hake stared at the judas on his arm, shining cold blue in the diffuse light. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah. Well. Listen, there’s not much they can do to me. I’m on Italian territory. I haven’t done anything against the law here, or anyway not much. Besides, I helped the Italians find Nederkoorn.”
Hake said, “I think the way I was looking wasn’t so much guilty as just plain foolish. What will you do now?”
Her expression became opaque. “That much I don’t trust you, Hake.” And then she added, “Actually, there’s not much I can do. I’m blown, for here and now. I’ll move to another place. There are others who will stay and carry on—” She hesitated, glanced at her watch, and then said more rapidly, “And that’s what I wanted to see you for. Will you join up?”
“Join what?”
“Join on the side of the good guys! What the hell do you think? You can make up for a lot of crumminess if you’ve got the nerve to take a stand now.”
Hake brought his open palm down flat on the water, splashing the girl and startling her. He said furiously, “God damn it, Leota! How do I know your stupid games are any better than theirs? This whole situation is sick.”
“Then don’t make it sicker! Come on, Hake. I don’t expect you to fall into my arms now. I just want you to think about it. I’ve got to go, but I’ll give you time. Overnight. I’ll call you at your hotel tomorrow morning. Early. I’m sure they’re bugging your wire, so I won’t say anything. You speak. Just say hello. Say it once for yes, twice for no—three times for maybe. Which,” she added irritably, “is about what I’d expect from you. Then I’ll get in touch, never mind how. And, Hake. Don’t try setting any traps or anything. I’m not alone, and the other people on my side right now play rougher than I do.”
She picked up her face mask, but paused before putting it on. “Unless you’d care to say yes right now?” she inquired.
He didn’t answer, because there was a sound like a tiny rapid-fire cap pistol from the mouth of the cave. They both turned. The little hydrogen-powered outboard came bouncing through the opening and then arrowed straight toward them, looking as if it were suspended in blue space.
Hake grabbed an oar. He didn’t know the two men coming toward them, but it was a good bet that they worked for Yosper. “Get out of here, Leota!” he cried. “I’ll see if I can keep them busy—”