Dark Destiny

by Edward S. Aarons

  "All right, Sam. I guess I can only wish you luck now."

  "Ellen, don't you understand how I feel?"

  "I guess I never will. Are you going to Isla Honda from here?"

  He nodded. "Yes."

  "Suppose the police are there?"

  "I'll be careful."

  She looked at him, and her hands came up and cupped his face. "Kiss me, Sam."

  He kissed her. Her lips felt cool and chaste and very remote.

  14

  He walked back across town using the side streets and lanes. A low overcast obscured the moon and darkened the night. It was ten o'clock when he paused outside the little drugstore on a dingy corner. Two men were inside, talking in animated Spanish. A Cuban grocery store next door was closed and shuttered. He thought of Luis De Silva and of Harry Lundy and of his plans for the fat boatman. There were too many unanswered questions circling in his mind, he thought. The thing to do was to choose one problem at a time and try to resolve it. Lashing out at everything and anything would gain him nothing.

  The men in the drugstore paid no attention to him when he entered the phone booth. He asked the operator for Western Union and framed the wording of his radiogram to Havana. He used Benny Suarez' telephone for charges and a return message. The request for information that he finally worded concerned Luis De Silva's credentials.

  He had done a lot of thinking about De Silva. Aside from the brief glimpse he'd had of the man's papers, he knew nothing about him. It was strange that De Silva chose to operate independently of the local police authorities. Papers and credentials could be forged too easily and De Silva seemed too deeply involved to be accepted at face value. Sam's uneasy suspicions could not be rationalized away. It was even possible that De Silva, if he were not what he pretended to be, might be the key to the mystery of the three-year-old disappearance of Charley's two associates. Only one body had been recovered and identified as Gabrilan. The other, Jaquin, was still missing. Maybe Jaquin was still alive. If that were true and the money had gone down into the sea with Gabrilan's death, Jaquin could still be looking for the fortune stolen from the Caribe Traders Bank.

  De Silva could be Jaquin, Sam thought.

  It was not impossible. De Silva was the tight age and his physical description could be made to fit that of Gabrilan's partner.

  Sam stepped out of the telephone booth and quit the drugstore. The two men had stopped talking and now they turned to stare at him. They said nothing when he went outside. He walked quickly to the corner and then paused. The two men were out on the sidewalk, watching him. He forced himself to walk at a normal pace and then when he turned the corner he trotted quickly to the nearest alley and lost himself in it. At the next street he turned right again, then left, moving at a steady pace, quickly sprinting across the gaps from one shadow to the next. He heard no alarm behind him, but he continued to work his way across town in that fashion and no longer allowed himself the luxury of speculating on any of his problems except that of keeping out of the hands of the police.

  He entered Mobile Lane by the back way, in the same manner he had left it the other night with De Silva. It seemed as if a long time had passed since he had fought with Harry Lundy on the second floor of Benny's house. Pausing in the shadows of a royal poinciana tree, he looked up at the windows of the apartment where Benny lived. There were no lights up there, but the kitchen in the back of the house was being used and another light shone in the living room just beyond the open porch. A woman sat alone on the veranda across the sandy lane, which was no more than eight feet wide; her face was lost in the shadows. Sam walked past the hibiscus hedge and went through the gate in the fence and up the steps to Benny Suarez' front door.

  It wasn't locked. He let himself in and let the screen door close silently behind him, holding it with his fingertips. When he looked back, the woman across the way still sat there, rocking herself. A radio throbbed somewhere, picking up the Havana stations, making the air pulse with the high, excited singing of a mambo. The scent of Cuban cooking drifted through the house, a bolichi roast, Sam guessed. There was no one in the living room. The furniture was old and somewhat shabby, heavy and overstuffed, with framed photographs on the walls of a younger Benny and Estella. Sam walked on through to the big kitchen in the rear.

  Estella was there alone. She sat in a chair near the back screen door, staring out at the dark night. She looked tired, her face etched as if with pain, her body rigid in her black belted dress, her black hair, streaked with gray, pulled in a severe bun at the nape of her neck.

  She turned to look at him. She was not startled. Her dark eyes examined him without any emotion that he could see. She sighed quietly. "Go away," she said.

  "I wanted to see Benny. Is he here?"

  "Leave Benny alone. You have done enough to him."

  "It's his boat," Sam said. "I'd like to borrow it again."

  "Take it and go away," she said and sighed once more.

  Sam leaned against the kitchen table. The dishes were stacked in the sink, unwashed. An air of discouragement pervaded the room. He said: "What is it, Estella? Why do you hate me now? You don't believe I've killed anyone, do you?"

  "I do not know what to believe."

  "Then why are you my enemy?"

  "I did not say that."

  "But you behave as if I were yours."

  Her dark eyes touched him briefly, turned to the dark screen door where a big yellow moth fluttered persistently. The sound of the neighbor's radio drifted through the dark night.

  "It is because of Benny," she said. "Because of what you have done to him."

  "But he has helped me voluntarily."

  "He does not sleep well. He dreams. He suffers an agony in his sleep that I do not understand." The woman's eyes lifted again and studied Sam. "He is all I have. I do not wish him to be hurt."

  "He won't be," Sam said. "Where is Benny now?"

  "On his boat."

  "I will talk to him," Sam said. "But I must also talk to you."

  Her mouth tightened. "I wish to have none of it. I have nothing to say. You have brought trouble back again. And I wish only peace for my husband and myself, a peace which you disturb. You do not lie awake and listen to him groan in the night because of you. You do not see the worry and fear in his face while he sleeps, but I do. I live with it. I want no more of it. That is why I want you to go away."

  "Just tell me something," Sam said. "Then I'll go."

  "Is it about Benny?"

  "De Silva," Sam said. "Tell me about him."

  "I know nothing of him."

  "Did you ever see him before?"

  "No."

  "Did Benny know him when he first came to you?"

  "No."

  "You're sure of that, Estella?"

  "Seguro."

  He stood away from the table, dissatisfied. The house was very quiet. But it was not the quiet of peace and safety. There was something here he did not understand, almost as if the woman's fears were palpable, reaching out to touch him, too.

  "Is Benny satisfied that De Silva is a detective from Havana?" Sam asked.

  "He has not questioned it."

  "Where does De Silva live? Do you know?"

  "Of course. He sleeps here."

  Sam was startled. "In this house?"

  "Benny invited him to stay."

  "Did he come back from the dock with you?"

  "No. He comes and goes. I do not watch him."

  Sam pushed away from the kitchen table and went to the door. Estella did not get up from her rocker. Her eyes were black and opaque, fixed on his tall figure with no emotion at all. It seemed to Sam that she was a woman living in the shadow of some dreadful fear, numbed and suffocated by it. He remembered how affectionate Benny and his wife used to be and he wished he could do something to make Estella feel better. He said: "I won't come back again, Estella. I must borrow Benny's boat, but after that I shall not trouble either of you again."

  "You will be back," she sai
d quietly.

  She did not look at him again. He opened the screen door and stepped out into the dark little yard behind the house and found the path to the back gate. Looking back, he saw that Estella still sat in the rocker. She had covered her face with her hands and her shoulders moved as she wept.

  15

  Benny Suarez was not at the dock, but the small boat he had used before was there, with all his diving gear still intact in the tiny cabin forward. Sam filled the gas tank from the pump on the pier and shoved off, threading his way through the shrimp boats to the outer channel and then veering east along the line of keys that were strung like a series of bright lights across the dark, choppy water.

  The run to Isla Honda took half an hour and the wind had freshened even more by the time he arrived. He did not use the mole at his abandoned boatyard but continued on around the island to the beach where his bungalow was situated and then ran the bow up into a small inlet of mangrove and swamp between the bungalow and the main house. Ten minutes later he stood on the dark beach and stared at the lights of Isla Honda…

  He thought of Harry Lundy, the fat boatman, and his intentions crystallized. There were no lights aboard the schooner, which was still tied up at the private dock, the masts visible against the luminescent night sky. The boathouse was dark, too. He wondered about Mona and debated seeing her before confronting Lundy and then dismissed the thought as impractical. Turning, he walked through the warm, windy darkness toward the garage.

  All the cars had been put away and the big doors were shut. He went up the outer staircase to the apartment above. At the landing he paused, listening. He thought he heard water running from a tap, splashing into a wash basin. The water made a steady tinkling sound over the ceaseless rustle of the wind in the nearby banana trees. The apartment was in darkness. It was possible that Harry Lundy was out, but in that case he would have an opportunity to search the rooms thoroughly as Bill Somerset must have done. There wasn't much chance of finding anything, but he wanted to try.

  The door was not locked. He looked across the lawns at the main house. The windows there glowed peacefully, with no sign of unusual activity, but when he stepped inside he was possessed by a feeling of deep uneasiness, the wariness of an animal entering a trap. Nothing happened. The sound of water running in the bathroom was louder, that was all. Sam shut the door behind him with a soft click of the latch and moved across the dark room. He had been up here once since his return to Isla Honda and he remembered the general layout of the rooms from earlier years. There was a living room, quite large, comfortably furnished with wicker chairs, a broad settee, straw rugs, a built-in bar and bookshelves that were well filled. Beyond it was a bedroom and bath, to left and right, with a tiny kitchenette next to the bathroom. The jalousies had all been shut tight against the recent rain and had not been opened since. The air in the room felt musty and old. He thought he smelled cigarette smoke, not too recent; but he wasn't sure.

  He called softly into the darkness. "Harry?"

  There was no answer. He crossed to the bedroom doorway. Dim light filtered through the closed windows and touched the rumpled bed. It was empty. He was alone in the apartment.

  He began a quick and careful search starting with the living room, although he was not sure what he was looking for or if it was still here for him to find. Yet whatever Bill Somerset had discovered and wanted to tell him, it must have come from here, from something among Lundy's possessions. The fat boatman had always been too arrogant, too sure of his own powers on Isla Honda and it seemed to Sam that the only explanation for the man's attitude lay in the fact that Lundy possessed some knowledge or evidence that gave him a lever to pry his independence from John Ashton.

  He found nothing. The bedroom proved fruitless, too. In the bathroom, he shut off the tap. The water had been running into the tub and it was almost full to overflowing. Sam stood still, frowning, a sudden sense of danger oppressing him. It was an abnormal thing to do, to start to fill the bath and then leave it like this. Lundy, if he had started a bath, should have come back by now from wherever he had gone.

  He straightened and at that moment he heard the creak of the outer stairs as someone's weight shifted upon the tread.

  Sam quit the bathroom and crossed to the door with a long stride. The moment he flung the door open, the footsteps on the stairs clattered away into the windy darkness. Sam paused on the landing for an instant, seeing the bulky figure run across the driveway in front of the garage. He glimpsed the thick thatch of white hair, the outline of Lundy's heavy bulk.

  "Lundy!" he called.

  He thought he saw the man turn for an instant, but he wasn't sure. The boatman moved quickly, lumbering behind the ornamental hedge that bordered the lawn, turning away from the house. Sam hesitated another moment, then ran silently down the steps after him.

  Lundy was out of sight before he reached the edge of the shrubbery. The wind made the hibiscus hedges uneasy and their rustling filled the night. He paused, uncertain of the next move. The house seemed quiet enough. Then he thought he saw a shadow slide across the lawn and he turned that way, not sure if it was Lundy or someone else. Brush crackled off to his right and there came the quick, drumming of running feet across, the lawn. The sound was followed by a sudden yell of alarm, a thudding blow and then more thrashing in the shrubbery.

  Sam trotted silently toward the noise. He wished he had a weapon of some kind. Something was going on here that smacked of danger, something he did not understand. He reached the little path that bisected the island and led across the highway for a quarter of a mile to the opposite shore where his old boatyard was located. Again he thought he glimpsed Lundy's dark figure ahead of him and he looked for the other shadow he had seen. But there was only Lundy, perhaps a hundred feet ahead and even as he started after the man he was swallowed up by the tangled mangrove thicket behind the main house.

  Twice during his pursuit he thought he heard someone else moving in a path parallel to his own. At the highway he halted, while a car came from the west, headlights a flooding glare on the scene. He ducked down behind the embankment in a thicket of Spanish bayonet. The passing car drummed by and he saw Lundy for an instant, moving toward the opposite beach. Another shadow darted across the road after the boatman and Sam got up, following quickly. He was sure now that Lundy was running away from someone, moving in panicky flight in an effort to escape. He ran faster, using the path he knew so well and a moment later came to the edge of the open beach.

  Ahead was the gaunt outline of the abandoned marine railway and the leaning shape of the sail loft, dark against the southern sky. The hot wind made an endless rustling in the night around him. Sam abandoned the path and moved toward the low bulk of the office building, fifty feet removed from the sail loft. He stumbled over an old rusted anchor chain and the links made a harsh, metallic noise against the murmur of wind and sea and grass.

  The shot roared out almost instantly and from the tail of his eye he caught the muzzle flame, from a corner of the sail loft. The bullet kicked sand against his leg.

  Sam moved into deeper shadow beside the office shack. The shot was not repeated. He flattened against the rough clapboards and waited. Nothing moved except the dark wind and the line of underbrush that curved in a half circle around the cove. He forced his breathing back to normal and dried the palms of his hands on his thighs and then slid carefully to the corner of the shack and peered out across the beach. Something fluttered inside the abandoned office where he had worked so many hours struggling to get the boatyard established. It was only the wind reaching through the broken glass in the window frames.

  Then he heard the quick hiss of footsteps in the sand off to his right. He looked that way, but saw nothing except the pattern of shadows stirred by the wind among the ruins. Yet someone was there, moving toward the sail loft where Lundy had taken refuge. There was something implacable about this pursuit and some of the terror Lundy must have felt in his flight across the island communicated
itself to Sam. He wondered if there were any significance to the fact that Lundy had made the boatyard his objective. He doubted it. There was nothing here that could have had anything to do with Bill's murder.

  Crouching, he ran in a zig-zag course toward the sail loft opposite. Nothing happened. No further shots were fired. He found himself alone, panting, back flattened against the rough batten boards of the barn-like building. He wondered if his eyes had played tricks on him in spotting the second pursuer. Then he moved around toward the front of the building, cautious of every footstep now, until he edged into the big, sagging doorway to the loft.

  Darkness and silence brooded inside. The wind made little whinings and whimperings through the cracks of the building and moaned persistently up high in the vastness of the gables. The place had long been stripped of its equipment, but there was an accumulation of rubbish and abandoned gear that made his entrance treacherous. He managed to slip inside without sound.

  He paused and listened, but there was only the wind.

  "Lundy!" he called.

  His voice went barreling and echoing through the empty loft.

  "Lundy, come out of there!"

  There was no answer.

  He thought he heard a quick footfall to his left, where a flight of stairs led to a high gallery up above. A tread suddenly creaked and snapped under someone's weight. He strained to see through the darkness, but he might as well have been blindfolded. He cursed silently, wondering what was going on, why Lundy had taken to his heels like this. He was sure someone else was in here besides the boatman, but he had no way of knowing who it could be.

  He was at the foot of the stairs when the shot suddenly roared up above. The sound of it was deafening in the big, echoing enclosure. He ducked instinctively, but the bullet had not been intended for him. A scream, oddly high and womanish, overlapped the echoes of the gun shot. Something hurtled down out of the darkness above him with the rending sound of splintering wood as a railing gave way above. Sam hurled himself out of the way as a body hit the hard, cement floor of the loft. The sound of it was sickening. He stumbled over the man's legs, fell to his knees and picked himself up again. Footsteps clattered down the stairs along the side of the building, hurrying desperately. He didn't stop to think of the danger. He threw himself forward in an effort to intercept the person trying to escape.