Cat stiffened.
“The Anaconda must treat them bloody well. She was damned enthusiastic.”
Cat said nothing.
“I understand there’s a little show at the disco tonight. You going?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Oh, you must, old fellow. Everyone’ll be there. Bloody good show, they say.” He winked again, but then his eyes did something odd.
Cat turned and followed his gaze. The dining-room doors had opened, and an Indian dressed in a plain khaki uniform, carrying an automatic weapon, stood in the doorway. There was a girl with him. He was holding her by the hair.
“Good God!” the Englishman spat. “She’s mine! I mean, the one I had last night!”
The girl was trembling violently and crying. There was a dust of white powder on her nose and upper lip. The room had gone very quiet.
From the other end of the room, Cat heard a chair scrape on the floor and footsteps walking the length of the table. Still, he could not take his eyes off the terrified girl. Prince walked into his vision, toward the girl. He moved calmly, deliberately. He approached the girl and stopped. The soldier said something Cat couldn’t catch. Prince reached down to the holster on the soldier’s belt, unsnapped it, and removed a .38-caliber pistol from it. The soldier yanked backward on the girl’s hair, and when she began to cry out, Prince put the barrel of the pistol into her mouth and fired. A long spray of blood and gore spurted from the back of her head, and she went limp. Prince handed the pistol to the guard, then turned to face his audience.
“I’m terribly sorry to have interrupted your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, but my rule against the use of drugs has been violated, and it was necessary for me to take steps. Please go on with your meal.” He motioned to a waiter, who produced a napkin and began mopping up the blood. The guard dragged the girl from the room by her hair. Prince returned to his seat.
Cat sat, frozen. Meg picked up a glass of water and sipped it. Her face was pale. The Englishman made an odd noise, then got up and stumbled from the room, a napkin pressed to his mouth. A murmur rose from the crowd again, this time subdued. Cat looked down the table to where Jinx was. She sat, staring vacantly ahead, her lower lip trembling.
Cat wished to God he did not have to wait until morning to confront the Anaconda. If he had had any doubts before about what he would do to him, he had none now.
31
They stopped at a fork in the path. “How are you feeling?” Cat asked.
“Ill,” Meg replied. “You know, I’ve seen people killed before. I’ve even seen people executed. In the Philippines I saw half a dozen men made to kneel, then shot in the back of the head by Communist guerrillas. But I’ve never seen anything quite so deliberately... casual. I think Prince is insane — and I need hardly point out — very dangerous.”
Cat nodded. “That could as easily have been Jinx.”
“It will be, eventually, if you don’t get her out of here.”
“I know. I’m going to do it tomorrow. Right now, though, I think you should go back to the cottage and get some rest. I’m not ready for bed yet.”
“Be careful,” she said, kissing him lightly. She walked on toward the cottage.
Cat stood and watched her go for a moment, then he turned and walked toward the discotheque, a building tucked away behind some trees a hundred yards from the main house. He struggled to maintain his composure. The anger that he had so carefully kept under control since the act of piracy on the yacht now threatened to overwhelm him, and the wanton murder of the girl had increased the pressure. Some part of him had known all along that he would- do what he was going to do this evening, but still the realization surprised him.
He opened the door to the building, and a wall of noise struck him. Perhaps it was music, he couldn’t tell, but the volume was staggering. He put his hands to his ears and squinted. There was some sort of light show in progress, and it seemed to be coordinated with the music, but no one was dancing. People, mostly men, stood on tiers descending to the dance floor, watching something. Cat walked to the rear of the crowd and stood on tiptoes to see.
On a mat spread on the dance floor, two young Indian men, prodigiously built, were dancing with a very beautiful blonde girl. As Cat watched, one of the men stretched out on the floor, and the girl knelt between his legs. She bent over him and took his penis into her mouth, leaving her hips raised. The other man rubbed his huge, tumescent organ with a lubricant, then entered her from behind. The three of them moved, locked in their bizarre sexual dance.
Cat looked away, nearly ill. She was no older than Jinx, and she seemed both drugged and frightened. Some of the crowd were shouting encouragement over the hideous music.
Cat forced himself to look around the audience carefully, and he found who he was looking for, standing at the edge of the crowd, near the front. The show seemed to have just started, and Cat had the feeling it would go on for some time. He wanted to have a look around the place. He edged past the crowd, past a column into a dimly lit hallway, closed off by a door at the end. He walked quickly down the hall, passed a ladies’ room, then came to a men’s room. Inside, there were four urinals and two stalls. Along the opposite wall was a counter with four sinks. It was expensively decorated and as dimly lit as the hallway. Cat left the men’s room and stepped back into the hall. At the end, to his left, was a pair of swinging doors leading to a kitchen. A couple of staff members in white uniforms were working there.
He opened the door at the end of the hall, looked into the darkened room, and found a light switch. It was a large pantry, well stocked with canned food and staples. He stepped into the room. Against the opposite wall, next to sacks of potatoes and onions, were two identical barrels, one newly opened and filled with dried beans, the other with only an inch or two of beans at the bottom. He switched off the light, left the pantry, and returned to the main room of the disco.
The show was continuing, but the participants had changed. Now there were two girls, both Anglo-looking, and one enormously built young Latino. The crowd had lost none of its interest. Cat looked and found his man standing as before, but now looking bored. Suddenly, he turned and picked his way through the cheering crowd, toward the hallway. Cat moved sideways to the column and watched as he walked toward the men’s room. Cat glanced at the crowd again to make sure no one else had followed, but they were rapt. This is too lucky, Cat thought. Something has to go wrong. He found he was breathing rapidly.
He walked quickly down the hall toward the men’s room, glancing over his shoulder, and went in. Denny was standing at a urinal. Cat went to a sink and began to wash his hands. The music was still loud, even in here. Trembling, he splashed some water on his face. This moment that he had been afraid to hope for had come.
“Quite a show, huh?” Denny said loudly.
Cat jumped. He hadn’t expected him to speak. “Yeah.”
Denny zipped up his trousers and came to the sink next to Cat. He turned on the water and began to wash his hands. “Yeah, I picked those girls out myself.” He sounded drunk. “Every one of them. The Anaconda doesn’t like Latino girls, you know. Just Anglos, and they’ve gotta be classy-looking and young. I keep him supplied.” He bent low over the sink, splashed some water on his face, and rubbed vigorously.
Cat stepped back from the sink, turned toward Denny, and, with all the force he could muster, lifted a foot and drove his heel into the base of the younger man’s spine. Denny’s scream was partly muffled by his mouth hitting the faucet over the sink, but with the din in the disco, no one would ever have heard him. He collapsed onto his back, still screaming, spitting blood and teeth.