Thirteen
The inside of the blurred cabin cleared slowly. I was lying flat on my stomach, looking through the porthole. The cabin-cruiser swayed gently at her moorings. Except for the soft lapping of water against her sides, there was nothing but silence. The crying sea gull had found its mate. I lifted the snout of Wilhelmina and pointed it at Quick Willie.
He had just pulled down Tanya’s skirt and was working it over her ankles. When he had it off, he let it drop to the deck. Then he straightened and looked down at her.
“You young ones sure look good,” he said, panting slightly. “I’m gonna really like this, baby. You’re put together real nice.”
Tanya remained silent. There was no fear in her eyes, and although her face was cut and bruised, you could still see the loveliness. She lay there, one knee raised slightly, arms high behind her head.
Quick Willie hooked his thumbs over the waistband of her bikini panties. Slowly he began pulling them down. He was bent over slightly, a leering, slobbering grin on his stupid face.
Tanya’s green eyes narrowed slightly. She let the raised knee drop, and even raised her fanny a little to help him pull the panties down.
His face was directly over her belly now and moving down as he inched the panties along. The top of the triangular, chestnut-velvet thatch was revealed. Willie kept slowly pulling down the panties.
With Tanya’s arms raised high, her breasts looked like soft overturned milk bowls topped with copper coins the size of half dollars. Remembering the taste of those breasts I could understand Willie’s eagerness. It made me want to kill him more.
When half of the chestnut thatch was showing, Quick Willie saw the end of a small hollow cylinder. It seemed to be rising as he pulled down on the bikini panties.
Willie frowned with his mouth open. “Now what da hell is dis?” he said in his nasal grunt.
He pulled down the bikinis farther and farther as more of the cylinder was revealed. His forehead was wrinkled in a frown of curiosity. When he got the panties down over Tanya’s thighs, the barrel of the small gun snapped straight up. There was a short, loud BANG, and the end of the barrel started sending out tiny wisps of smoke.
Quick Willie stiffened straight up. His creased, swollen-knuckled hands tried to reach toward his forehead but only got as far as his chest. He twisted sideways, the frown still on his face. Now he was facing my porthole. The frown left his face and was replaced with a look of utter disbelief. There was a tiny dime-size hole, just now beginning to bleed, in the middle of his forehead.
He saw me and his mouth dropped open wide. It was the last thing he ever saw. With his arms straight out he stumbled toward the porthole. His hands hit it first, but they had no strength. I flinched slightly as his face smashed against the porthole. For a split second it was pressed against the glass, eyes wide and staring, streams of blood flowing down both sides of the mangled nose. His forehead pressed against the porthole, smearing blood all over it. He was so close I could see the tiny red arteries in the whites of his eyes, a cobweb of maps now being filmed over with death.
Quick Willie fell back away from the porthole and crumbled to the deck like dried clay that had been hit with a hammer. Then all I could see was the smeared blood on the glass.
Tanya had also seen me.
Clutching the fingers of my left hand against my wound, I got to my hands and knees and worked my way along the smooth catwalk toward the main hatch. Going down the ladder was not difficult. I just grabbed the handrails and let my feet fall down in front of me. It was a five-foot slide. But I crumbled on the deck below like a pile of laundry. There was no strength in my legs: they couldn’t seem to hold me up.
I shuffled down the companionway in a sitting position making my agonizing way to the door of the main cabin. It was open.
“Nick?” Tanya called as I got in. “Nick, is it really you?”
Once inside the cabin, I shuffled to the foot of the bunk and pulled myself up enough to look at her face. I smiled at her.
Her lower lip sucked in between her teeth. Tears flooded her eyes. “I... gave it away, didn’t I? It was my fault they found our cover. If you’d had somebody more experienced, the mission would have been successful. How, Nick? Where did I slip?”
I pushed myself up until I was sitting on the edge of the bunk at her feet.
“Nick!” she cried. “You’re bleeding! They...”
“Hush,” I said in a hoarse voice. Wilhelmina was still in my right hand. I sniffled once and rubbed my right forearm across my nose. “Just... want to rest for awhile.” The lightheaded feeling was returning.
“Darling,” Tanya said, “if you can get my hands untied, I’ll be able to stop that bleeding. We have to stop it. Your whole side is covered with blood, even your left pants leg.”
My chin dropped to my chest. She was right. If she could get something around my waist maybe the dizziness would leave.
“Come on, darling,” she coaxed. “Try to work your way up to my wrists.”
I leaned to the side and felt my face fall against the smoothness of her belly. Then pushing with my hands I moved my head up the hollow of her rib cage, then over the soft mounds of her breasts. My lips were touching her throat. Then I slid my head over the top of her shoulder and felt the blanket on the bunk. The side of my neck was resting against her arm.
She moved her head and turned so our faces were less than an inch apart. Smiling at me she said, “A girl could get herself all worked up over that kind of maneuver.”
The dizziness returned and I had to rest. I felt her lips softly against my cheek, moving down, searching. Lifting my head slightly, I let my lips touch hers.
It was not a kiss of passion or of lust. She was telling me I could do it. The touching of our lips was soft, gentle, and filled with an emotion that went beyond the physical.
Groping with my hands, I heard a clanging as Wilhelmina fell to the deck. Then my hands were on her left arm. Slowly I slid them out, reaching above my own head, until I could feel the knot at her wrists. It seemed to take forever to get the damned thing untied.
But I knew I had done it when I felt her arms circle my neck. She pulled my face against the wishbone just below her throat and held me. At that moment I felt I could stay there forever.
“Darling,” she whispered. “Listen to me. I’m going to leave you for a little bit. Somewhere on this boat there has to be a first-aid kit. I’ll be back as soon as I find it. You just rest.”
The dizziness returned, and I was only aware of the coldness she had left in her absence. Besides the bunk, the cabin had a rolltop desk, a table with four chairs, a sliding closet door, and an overhead lamp that kept swaying back and forth slightly. A photo was on the wall opposite the bunk. It showed Konya, younger and with hair. This must have been his yacht, and the landing strip had to be on his land.
My eyes closed and I thought of Tai Sheng taking off in the Lear jet to deliver the shipment of heroin. He wouldn’t leave without the list. Would he? Suppose he had all the help he needed on his own personal list, the one showing all the Chinese agents in the Chinatowns of America. Then he wouldn’t need Nicoli’s list, or me. But I wanted him to come to me. Everyone was dead but him. He had to need that list.
I was being moved around but my eyes remained closed. I felt as though a cocoon was being pressed all around my waist. It hurt like hell, but after the sixth or seventh push I started getting used to it. A blanket passed behind my eyes and I left again. Then I felt my shoulder being shaken.