Assignment — Angelina

by Edward S. Aarons

  A board creaked faintly in the ceiling overhead.

  Durell moved into the corridor. To his right was an open door with a small printed sign thumbtacked to it: Darkroom. He glimpsed wash trays, shelves of chemical bottles, two enlargers on a metal-topped table. A third enlarger lay on the floor, shattered, where it had been carelessly or irritably shoved off the worktable. A filing cabinet stood open, and small yellow envelopes of negatives were scattered on the linoleum floor. The air was heavy with the sharp smell of spilled developing solutions.

  The floor board upstairs creaked again.

  Durell drifted silently toward the front of the house. There was no one in the front shop, but a glimpse of wreckage and supplies strewn about behind the glass-topped counters snowed that this too, had been searched with quick impatience. He turned his body slightly and looked up the shadowy stairway to the second-floor landing.

  With every window in the house shuttered, the place was a dark oven, filled with the smell of mildew that not even the pungency of spilled photographic acids could cover. A truck rumbled by on the highway, and windowpanes rattled everywhere. Whoever was upstairs took advantage of the sound to retreat a few cautious steps toward the back gallery. Whoever it was, he was trying to circle around toward the back door on that gallery and get down the rear stairway while Durell was still in the front part of the house.

  Durell went up the steps with a quick, silent rush.

  A shadow lunged to the left and away from him in the hallway. Something hurtled through the air and missed his head and crashed with the sound of splintering glass against the wall at his side.

  "Hold it," Durell called softly. "You're covered."

  * * *

  He glimpsed an oval face, a flash of white, and then the shadow plunged toward the back door. Durell lifted his gun, then suddenly tossed it aside and dived for the figure. It was a girl. She gasped in sudden terror and whirled, fighting him, her nails scratching at his face, her knee rising expertly to disable him. He slipped by her attack and caught one arm and forced it firmly up behind her back, driving her a few stumbling steps ahead of him until she jolted against the corridor wall.

  "Take it easy," he said gently.

  "Let me" go!" she breathed. "You filthy, thieving murderer..."

  She was full and firm, writhing in his grip. She wore a man's chambrey shirt and skin-tight dungarees. Her long black hair swung wildly across Dwells face as she tried to bend her neck and bite at his hands. Durell locked an ankle across hers and threw her off balance. She fell to the floor, dragging him with her.

  "Easy, Angelina," he said.

  She struggled another instant, arching her body to throw off his weight. Then she abruptly went limp and silent, except for the quick panting of her breath. "Who are you?" she whispered.

  "Durell." He laughed softly. "Sam Durell. Are you alone here, Angelina?"

  He saw the widening shine of her dark eyes. Her face moved. "What?"

  "Is anyone else in the house?"

  "No, no." Her voice was small. "Sam?"

  "That's right."

  "Let me look at you."

  He released her cautiously. Her body was quiet under him, except for the quick tumult of her breathing.

  "Oh, God. Sam? Sam Durell? Is it really you?"

  "Yes."

  "Where did you — I haven't seen you in so long. And now you come back like this, scaring the life out of me..." She swallowed and pushed at her black hair with the back of her hand. "You're with the FBI, aren't you?"

  "Not exactly."

  "But you're a cop, aren't you? Your grandfather said..."

  "Not exactly a cop."

  "Let me up, Sam.

  He stood up in the dim hallway. Light came through the shuttered door to the rear gallery, making bright yellow bars on the faded rose-colored carpet. Dust motes danced in the swirl of air currents when he moved. The girl stared up at him with slowly widening eyes.

  She was lovely. She had the wild beauty of the dark bayous in her, with the raven night caught in her disheveled black hair. The depth of deep bayou pools was in her eyes. Her mouth was wide, her lower lip full and sensuous, trembling until she caught it between even white teeth. The buttons of her chambray shirt had broken loose and he saw the smooth curves of her unsupported breasts. He remembered her vividly as a girl, meeting him behind her father's store in Bayou Peche Rouge. How long ago since he had last seen her? Ten, twelve years? He remembered the awkward, exploratory nights they had shared. Their first experience, the first for either of them. He had never forgotten her. She had grown into a rich, dark beauty, like the wild orchids that bloomed in the green fastness of the delta swamps.

  "Are you remembering, Sam?" she whispered.

  "This isn't the time to remember anything," he said. "Where is Pierre?"

  She rose gracefully to her feet. She was tall for a woman. "What brought you here just now, Sam?"

  "I'm looking for Labouisse," Durell said flatly. "I came down from Washington to try to keep something from happening to him."

  "You came too late. It's already happened."

  "Did you search this place, Angelina?"

  No.

  "Did you see who did it?"

  "No."

  "What were they looking for? Did Pete tell you?"

  "I don't know. He can't talk. He..." She shook her head. In the gloom of the hallway, her face reflected deep terror. "I came back to get some things for him. To try to help him. And then I heard you come in. My heart almost stopped. It's still beating — so crazy — Sam, don't look at me like that. Please. Not now."

  "Where is Pete?" he asked again.

  "Ill take you to him," she said softly. "I know I can trust you. Some men caught him and did terrible things to him. He got away from them, though, and came through the swamps in a pirogue. I found him down in Petit Gauche Channel. Remember it?"

  "I remember. Is he still there?"

  "Come," she said. "I was just picking up some bandages. But I think I'm too late, anyway. I think he'll be dead when we get there."

  Chapter Five

  Durell walked to the gallery door and looked out. The lane and the board fence and the swamps beyond were drowned in silent sunshine. He looked beyond the scrub pines that merged into the oak and cypress a little farther out. Nothing moved that he could see. But he did not expose himself to anyone who might be out there. He turned back as Angelina came toward him. Her hands were empty.

  "Where are the first-aid supplies you came to get?"

  "You didn't give me a chance to pick them up." Her hand was spread on her breast. "You frightened me so, Sam..."

  "Get the stuff well need," he said briefly. "And stay away from this door. Don't go out until I join you." He saw her dark eyes go wide again. She understood their danger. "Which is Pete's bedroom?"

  She pointed down the hall. "That one, I think."

  "Don't you know?"

  She smiled. "Yes, it's that one, Sam."

  He left her and went into the bedroom. It had been ransacked like the rest of the house, but much more thoroughly than the shop and the darkroom below. Durell paused in the middle of the room. The air smelled dead behind the closed shutters. In the faint light that seeped through the slats, he saw that the bed had been torn apart, the mattress slewed to the floor, and every drawer in the huge mahogany dresser stood open, with Pete's clothing scattered everywhere. His glance settled on a foot locker that had been pulled from a corner and stood askew under the windows. The broken hasp on the lock showed how it had been forced open. Army uniforms, combat boots, and a helmet liner lay on the floor. A bag containing a Purple Heart medal and a Bronze Star had been dumped without ceremony beside the helmet liner. A collection of snapshots had been given the same treatment. Durell picked up two or three. One of them showed Pete Labouisse in front of the cathedral at Chartres. A smiling, chunky G.I. with a broad face and heavy black brows and an air of excitement in the way he stood and looked into the sun and the camera. Another
showed him with his arm around a Belgian farm girl, with a little boy standing to one side, looking frightened. Durell dropped the snapshots back on the floor. A black and silver crucifix shone on the wall over the bed. He looked at it for a moment and then returned to the trunk. A large manila envelope lay to one side, partly hidden under the tumbled uniforms. He opened it and saw copies of citations, service records, letters. One of the letters was on the stationery of the old Reichskanzelrei. It was signed by Goering. He leafed quickly through the sheaf of souvenirs. He didn't find what he was looking for; he hadn't really expected to.

  Angelina appeared in the doorway, her figure magnificent in her chambray shirt and tight dungarees. "What is it, Sam?" She pushed again at her black hair on her forehead. She carried a small packet of surgical gauze, a bottle of iodine, a pair of scissors. "What are you looking for?"

  "Don't you know?" he asked.

  "I can't imagine. I don't know what this is all about."

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "Sam, don't make noises like a cop to me. This is Angelina, remember? My man has been hurt, and he needs help. I'm going back to him. Right now."

  "All right. But be careful."

  It was not far from the house on the highway. A path had been beaten through the swamp, twisting and turning among the tall cypress knees, winding deep into the green jungle of the bayou. The girl led the way. Durell walked quietly and alertly behind her. Now and then he watched the lithe movement of her hips in the tight denims she wore, and he remembered how it had been many years ago. He did not see the pirogue until Angelina halted suddenly.

  "Over there," she whispered.

  Black water gleamed through the underbrush. Far in the distance, on the main canal from Bayou Peche Rouge, came the steady beat of a fishing boat's diesel. Insects hummed and flickered through the slanting shafts of sunlight that came down through the trees.

  "Stay where you are," Durell told the girl.

  He went ahead cautiously. In a moment he saw the pirogue, driven up into the mud between two towering cypress trees, almost hidden by a curtain of moss. At first he thought the pirogue was empty. Then he saw the man sprawled in the bottom of the boat, on his back, his face upturned to a narrow angle of sunlight that picked him out. Something went thrashing away through the brush as Durell approached. The flies and other insects were more reluctant to leave.

  His glance flicked away from the pirogue to another boat tied to a pine stump at the water's edge. It was a small outboard runabout, painted dark green and white. Nobody was in it. A woman's white handbag lay on one of the seats.

  He looked again at Pete Labouisse. Only in a general way did he resemble the young GI in the snapshots. He had become pudgy, and most of his dark hair was gone except for a curly fringe around the gleaming baldness in the middle of his scalp. His eyes stared unwinkingly into the spear of sunlight that touched his face, and Durell did not have to examine him to know that he was dead.

  He moved closer, anyway. The dead man was wearing cowhide fishing boots, old denims, a thin checked work shirt almost colorless from many salt-water washings. His face was badly battered, and there was blood on each hand where his fingernails had been crushed, and there was blood on the dungarees between his legs. Durell let out his breath in a long sigh. His face was like stone as he stepped beside the pirogue and very carefully loosened the wide leather belt around the trousers and looked at the ugly wound between the dead man's legs. He tasted acid in his throat. He suddenly felt cold.

  A quick, shuddering gasp came from behind him and he looked up and saw Angelina with both hands pressed hard across her mouth.

  "Get away," he said harshly.

  "But why... how could they..."

  "Don't ask me. I told you to get away." Durell straightened and pushed her back toward the trail. Angelina stumbled and fell to her knees and covered her face with her hands. A moaning came from her. Durell said quickly: "Is that your runabout, with the pirogue?"

  Her head moved, nodding. Her hair screened her face.

  "How did you happen to find him here?" he insisted.

  "I... I usually come to his house this way."

  "And he was alive when you found him?"

  "I thought he was, yes."

  Durell was insistent. "Did he say anything to vou at all? Did he say who did it?"

  "N-no."

  "Didn't you examine him when you found him?"

  "I was... I didn't want to touch him."

  The silent green of the underbrush and the dark waters of the swamp were suddenly and infinitely menacing. Durell still felt cold. "Go ahead and be sick, if you want to…" he said gently.

  She shook her head. "I'm all right now."

  He helped her to her feet. Her weight was soft and heavy against him. "Sam, I don't understand. Why should anyone do such a horrible thing? What kind of men were they?"

  "I don't know," he said. His voice was curiously flat. "I expect to find out."

  * * *

  He had the feeling they were being watched. The way back to the house seemed shorter on the return than on going, and although he saw nothing out of the ordinary, the feeling that his every step was being observed remained with him. Angelina walked quietly beside him. Some of the shock was gone from her eyes, and he kept talking to her, questioning her, to help her mind with other problems.

  "Were you in love with him, Angelina?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps. What is love? He was a good man. He wanted me; he was in love with me for a long time." Her eyes slanted briefly up at Durell's lean face. "Nobody has ever had me since we — since you, Sam. Do you believe that?"

  "Why not?" he said. "Yes, I believe you."

  "I was in love with you. I know what that was like. It was not the same with Pete. He tried to be successful, but some people never make it. No matter what they do or how hard they work, they are failures. It was like that with Pete. I know he wanted Papa's store. I guess he thought if he married me and had the store, he could run it and make out, somehow. But I never had in mind to let him take over the business from me. I know he would have ruined it, even with the best of intentions. He was that land of a man."

  "But you were going to marry him," Durell said.

  "Who else is there? A woman must have a man down here, or she dries up and dies in this swamp and heat. I could depend on Pete. He didn't drink or gamble. He was gentle with me." Her face moved, changing. Her mouth shook. "That terrible thing should not have been done to him."

  "He had something they wanted. Something you may know about. Jonathan tells me that you went through his stuff and tried to sell it off, the last time, when you thought he was dead. When he was down in Yucatan. If you went through the things he owned, you ought to have some idea of what it might be."

  "Oh, God," she said. "That.

  "What was it?"

  "So Jonathan told you. You must think I'm a greedy bitch."

  "I know what you are, Angelina," he said quietly.

  "Listen, Pete and I were engaged to be married. His family is gone; there was nobody but me. I tried to run his photo shop for him, at first, but I'm a business woman, not a photographer. Finally, when I gave up hope for him, I decided to close the studio and get rid of everything. What else could I do? Was I supposed to leave all that stuff just to rot?"

  "I'm not criticizing you; I just want to know what you might have tried to sell."

  She walked away toward the house, then stopped abruptly. Her face was broken. "Maybe I loved Pete in a funny kind of way. Not the way I once loved you, Sam. When I think of those crazy days, I still get a funny feeling inside me. Maybe I'm still in love with you. Would that surprise you?"

  "What did you try to sell, Angelina?"

  Her eyes searched his face. "Its all gone, isn't it?"

  "Angelina, please."

  "All right," she said. "I understand you, Sam. I'm sorry. I forgot you're some kind of a cop. That's what your grandpa told me, so I guess you have to ask questions. There wasn't any
thing valuable. Just a lot of old junk he saved, and his studio equipment. I advertised the cameras and stuff for sale, but there were no buyers. Then I had to go to St. Louis for some supplies for the general store. I do all my own purchasing. I'm not bad at business, you know. You'd be surprised. Anyway, while I was in St. Louis, I saw this ad in the newspapers, asking for war souvenirs, Hitler autographs, that kind of things. I remembered that Pete said he had some papers he liberated, as he said, from some factory in Germany. It was all so long ago. But I remembered it, from going through his things, and I answered the ad. I used a newspaper box because I was just in town for a few days, and I signed my answer A. Greene. That's my business signature. But, anyway, before I even got an answer, I had to come back to Peche Rouge — and there was Pete, home again. He was awful mad at me." She smiled thinly and touched her face with sadly reminiscent fingers. "He slapped me. It was the only time he got rough with me.

  "So you never followed up the ad?" Durell asked.

  "No."

  "Did you look through Pete's things in his bedroom to see if those papers are still there?"

  "They're gone, some of them. I looked, because the place was turned inside out when I got here, just before you showed up, Sam. But the war was so long ago! What value could all that junk have today?"

  "I wish I knew," Durell said.

  "Pete wasted an awful lot of time with those things. That was his trouble. He was a tinkerer. He thought once of going into the photostat business, too, and he spent every night for a month practicing, making copies of all that junk."

  Durell halted. They were at the back door of the photo shop. Traffic rumbled on the highway beyond the house, and he felt the vibration of a heavy refrigerator rig rolling north from the shrimp canneries. The ground shook underfoot.

  "Pete made photostatic copies?" he asked softly.

  "Sure, but..."