In that moment a lot of the zip went out of me. The happy sort of exhilaration during which I'd been charging pell-mell about drained from me slowly, and by the time one of the men spoke I was not only calmed down, but nearly sober. Those looks weren't just unfriendly. They were murderous. And that is not merely a figure of speech—murder looked out at me from at least two pairs of eyes.
One pair belonged to the man I'd had the tussle with. Joe Navarro, Bunny had called him. He must have come straight here after our beef. And that would have interested me greatly if I'd had time to think about it. But I barely had time to look the other men over quickly.
Navarro was the only one standing. The three others were sitting around a low rectangular table, in thickly upholstered chairs. Closest to me was the guy in the middle. His back had been toward the door, and he'd jerked around in his chair. He was a short, pale-faced man with thinning, sandy-colored hair, blue eyes, and a wide pointed chin.
The other two were seated at my left and right, at opposite ends of the table. The one on my left slowly rose to his feet, placing his hands—long thin hands with long thin fingers—on the table top, and looked steadily at me. He was about six feet tall, thin, with regular, almost aristocratic features, and a thin sharp nose like the blade of a knife. White hair covered his head in tight rippling waves. His black dinner jacket looked expensive, as if the material had been made by the ounce and bought by the pound, very well tailored and smoothly fitting. His black patent leather shoes looked as if they'd been manufactured within the hour. In fact, the man had a kind of shiny, new look all over. His face was tanned and smooth, barely lined, but he must have been over fifty, maybe close to sixty years old. He stared calmly at me, features almost without expression, but his dark eyes seemed to burn with the fires of hell, as though from behind them he could see me being turned by the devil on a spit and greatly enjoyed the sight. That was the other pair of eyes with murder in them.
The last of the four, at the table's right, was a big man, with big bones heavily fleshed. His hands were clasped together on the table and black hair sprouted from their backs like long whiskers. The flesh of his face sagged a little, as if too heavy for the muscles beneath; or as if the muscles themselves were too weak to hold his face firmly in place. Heavy lids half covered his eyes, and his fleshy mouth sagged at the corners. He was the one who spoke first.
“Get the hell out of here, you stupid—”
Joe Navarro interrupted him, blurting, “That's the jerk I been telling you about. That's Shell Scott.”
He might just as well have sent an electric current through them. They jumped a little, involuntarily—at least, two of them did. The sandy-haired guy's mouth popped open, and the big fleshy man's heavy hands suddenly balled into fists. Only the one on my left, the shiny, aristocratic egg, stayed motionless, eyes burning.
I carry a .38 Colt Special with a two-inch barrel. It was in its clamshell holster at my left shoulder, as always. I didn't have the faintest idea what I'd stumbled into, but for about two seconds there I thought I might have to use the gun.
The big man on my right got quickly to his feet, and Navarro took a step toward me. Then the white-haired man said quietly, long fingers gently smoothing his lapel, “Precisely why are you here, Mr. Scott?” He spoke in a quiet, clipped voice, as if asking me to join them for a game of darts.
“I made a mistake—”
Navarro said nastily, “You sure did,” but the heavy man chopped an authoritative hand at him, and he clammed.
I went on, “I'm sorry. I hope you'll accept my apology. I thought this was a ... storeroom.”
Still fingering his lapel, the white-haired guy said, “That is quite possible. We do accept your apology. This stateroom does look like a storeroom from the outside.” He glanced at the heavy man, who sat down in his chair again and glared at me.
Still glaring, he said, “What in hell did you want in a storeroom for?”
“I was looking for a ladder.” It sounded pretty silly now.
All four men looked at each other, then at me. The white-haired man spoke in his gentle, clipped voice to Navarro. “You might be courteous enough to help Mr. Scott, Joe. There must be a—” his face took on a puzzled expression—“a ladder somewhere.”
And that was all there was to it. The tension seemed to have evaporated quite a bit in the last few seconds. Joe started to say something, then shrugged and glanced at me.
I stepped back through the doorway as he moved toward me. He came into the alleyway and pulled the door shut, then pointed forward. We walked side by side along the deck—I wasn't letting this one get behind me. He didn't say anything, just walked with me to a closed door, opened it and reached inside to flip a light switch.
“If you really want a ladder, there's four of them.”
He was right. I could see the bulky coiled rolls in the room, side by side on the deck. But I wasn't thinking about ladders as I had been a few minutes ago. Right now, for the first time, I wanted off the Srinagar.
I glanced at my watch. Nine minutes of midnight. I sighed. Here I had two dates in the next nine minutes—one, the lovely, vastly intriguing Elaine; and the other, a naked tomato with very merry laughter, among other things. And I was thinking about getting off the yacht. But somehow that seemed like the wisest thought I'd had all night.
Because I was starting to feel, even if I didn't quite know why yet, as if an invisible hound, red jaws slavering, was snapping at my heels.
Chapter Four
I said to Navarro, “Thanks. I can get along without you.”
He shrugged, turned and walked away. I stepped into the storeroom, bent toward one of the rolled ladders and had my hands on it when I heard him behind me. Maybe I didn't really hear him; maybe I just sensed his presence somehow, or saw a shadow, or heard the sap whispering through the air.
My hands were on a rung of the ladder, and I shoved hard against it as I jerked my body aside. His weighted hand brushed my shoulder, and he hung in the air for a moment, off balance. I was off balance, too, but my foot hit the deck and steadied me, and I came back at him swinging. My left fist dug into his gut before he could get his feet planted, and that meant he wasn't going to get them planted. As I straightened up and cocked my right fist alongside my ear he was bending farther over, spitting air out his open mouth. And then I really gave it to him.
I tried to throw all 206 pounds into my fist as I pivoted hard and slammed my knuckles against the back of his jaw. They landed with a crack that should have been heard up on the top deck, and Navarro flew toward the bulkhead and banged into it. His head smacked against the metal wall, and he slumped silently. He'd stay slumped silently for a while.
I bent over and picked the sap off the deck where he'd dropped it. It was an ugly thing, designed to put into heads the kind of ache aspirins won't help. It was about eight inches long overall, leather thongs braided around a metal core, the last inch and a half thicker than the rest and more heavily braided—probably with lead instead of steel inside that inch and a half in order to produce a more magnificent lump. It was one of those saps referred to as “spring-loaded"; when the hand is slapped forward the spring action gives added speed to the blow. I looked at man's modern version of the stone ax, its heavy blunt end swinging back and forth with a nice balance and snap as I wiggled the grip in my hand, and I wondered: What was a dancer—that's what Bunny had called her “partner”—doing with a spring-loaded sap?
It was past time I started learning the answer to that question and a lot of others, but the place to do it did not, at least not tonight, seem to be on board the Srinagar. However, I had to meet Elaine and I couldn't leave Bunny out there sitting on the screw, or whatever she was doing.
I groaned. I no longer had the slightest doubt that the upcoming meeting between Bunny and me—if I ever actually managed to get back to her—was not going to be half what I'd anticipated. It wouldn't surprise me, I thought sadly, if Bunny hates me before we're through. But
I took a last look at Navarro, dropped his sap into my hip pocket, and picked up one of the rope ladders.
I got back up onto the port side of the deck with no further mishaps or delays. Bunny was out of sight again, which didn't surprise me. I called her name a couple of times, and a white shape floated through the water once more. A bit less exuberantly this time, it seemed.
“You decided to come back, huh?” she said. She wasn't laughing.
“Yeah. I had a miserable time.”
“You had a miserable time!”
“Well ... a guy tried to hit me on the head—”
“Hah!”
“He really did.” As I talked, I was busy with the ladder, fixing it to the rail and poised to shove it over.
“You had time to get hit, recover consciousness, see a doctor—”
“Bunny, please. I really—skip it. Look out below. Here comes the ladder.”
“Show me.”
I gave it a shove, it unrolled, thudding a bit against the hull, and then splashed. In a moment the little gal started up. Silently. About halfway up she paused and said, “I suppose I should thank you.” Her tone was a little more like the old tone.
“That's ... up to ... you.” My tone was a little more like the old tone, too. She was fairly clear down there, only a very few feet away, and even though there was little light, she presented a tremendously fetching picture, leaning back a bit and hanging onto the ropes.
“Did somebody really try to hit you on the head?”
“Honest. Cross my—hell, yes, somebody tried to sap me. Do you think I'm making all this up?”
Bunny said, “I just never knew many people who got hit on the head.”
“Stick with me, kid. You'll meet more—”
“What kind of man are you, anyway?”
“My dear,” I said with what remained of calm and patience, “you are never going to find out down there on that ladder.”
She laughed a little then, the first laugh in quite a while, and it was a nice sound indeed. Then she climbed the rest of the way. As she got closer I saw her face for the first time, shadowed in the soft light, but perky, pretty, with what might have been a grin on it. And beneath her merry face, the jutting roundness of a woman's thrusting breasts, swaying with her movement; below, only dim whiteness gleaming as her legs moved.
Then she was level with me, at the top of the ladder, and climbed easily, athletically over the rail. Behind her the lights of the Balboa Fun Zone were red and yellow and green, a dotted rainbow that cast its faint reflection on her wet skin. But I must confess I caught all that from the corner of just one eye, because Bunny had her own Fun Zone.
She stood on the deck for a moment, catching her breath. “Wow ... whew!” she said.
“Wow!” I said. “Whew!”
It didn't sound exactly right, but nothing would have sounded exactly right. Standing before me on the deck, in bare feet, she appeared even shorter than she ordinarily would have. I guessed she was five-two at most. But she was merely short; she wasn't little. No, this was not a little girl, this was a wantonly shaped young doll about twenty-two or -three years old, and with a trim dancer's body, shapely legs and firm upstanding breasts—almost brushing my white jacket at the moment.
She looked up at me, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, then said, “Well! You're not what I expected.”
“What ... did you ... expect?” Getting all that out wasn't easy.
“For all I knew, you were four feet tall and sixty years old. What are you, about eight feet high?”
“No, six-two. And I'm not even high any more. Nor am I sixty—no sixty-year-old man could have done half what I've done in the last—oh, murder. What time is it?”
Clearly, she was wearing no watch. I peered at mine. Four minutes of twelve. Well, that settled that.
“Have you got my bikini?” she asked.
“Yeah. In my pocket.” I took it out and held it before me.
“Golly,” she said, “I have put you to a lot of trouble, haven't I?”
“Not really. I just sort of ran into difficulties and delays. But ... it was all ... worth it.”
“You're sweet.”
She took the bikini from me, and started putting it on. Oddly enough, she put the top wisp, the bra, on first, reaching behind her back to tie the thing. It almost seemed as if she were going at this dressing operation backward, but backward or not it sure wasn't the wrong way. In fact, it sort of added something.
I was just about ruined, that's all. It seemed as though all my nerve endings were having little breakdowns, twirling about in tiny individual traumatic conniptions. I simply stood there, nerves wiggling, fingers wiggling, everything wiggling, and a feeling in my brain as if it were going to burn out with a mild sizzling sound, the way old light bulbs go.
“There,” she said with satisfaction, as she finished tying the bra.
“There,” I echoed.
“Golly,” she said, straightening up and putting one hand on my shoulder, “you've been wonderful.”
“Yeah,” I answered dully. “I've been ... a brick.”
“And I don't even know your name.”
“It's Shell. Shell Scott.”
“I'm Bernice Wade. Call me Bunny.”
“How do you do.”
“How do you do.”
We shook hands.
And, of course, that did it. Man, that did it. I knew that I had only two or three minutes left, at most. So I had purposely, carefully, determinedly avoided touching even one square inch of that wetly gleaming bare skin because there were so many other rounded inches wetly gleaming. I'd just stood there, an emotional shambles.
But now, with that automatic though incongruous clasping of hands, the warm touch of her palm and the friendly pressure of her fingers turned on the juice. The connection was made, the current started flowing; I really got a charge out of this one.
She said, “I do appreciate your help, Shell Scott. I really ought to give you a big kiss. Really. Just to prove my gratitude.”
She came closer to me, that one arm sliding from my shoulder up around my neck, the other soft arm rising to join the first, and I guess you know what happened then.
That was a kiss, believe me. Not even all the time she'd spent in the water had cooled Bunny down. She was a contained explosion which hadn't quite gone off, a hot, undulating, super-feminine mass of new and better sensations. It was a kiss that could scar you, maim you, cripple your lips, bend and sear them into a permanent pucker, and it lasted for quite a while. In fact, until she stopped it.
It was a good thing she pushed me away. It was a big kiss to begin with, but if it had gotten any bigger, we would no longer have been kissing. We would have been engaged.
She stepped back, and we both just stood there sort of vibrating for a few moments, then she said, “Mister. You can throw me a ladder every day if you want to.”
I sucked in some night air and started to speak, then remembered. I peered at my watch. In less than a minute, one small minute, it would be midnight.
I said, “I'll do it, too. But ... Bunny, dear. My sweet. This may sound a little strange. But I—I have to go.”
“Go?” She did seem startled. “You mean ... go?”
“Yes. I'm sorry. I don't want to—”
She interrupted me, briskly. “Well, thanks for the help. I must ... leave you cold, as the saying—”
“Bunny, you do anything but leave me cold. I simply told somebody I'd show up at the stroke of midnight, so I have to do it. Even though that midnight stroke may be mine.”
She snorted.
“I don't know how long it will take,” I said, “Maybe just a few minutes. If so, I'd like to try to find you again.” I thought of Navarro, who wouldn't be unconscious all night, and added, “Though I might have to leave in a hurry.”
By this time she had all of her bikini on. She put both hands on her hips and looked up at me, then said coolly, “I'll probably be on deck. I
've had enough swimming.”
I left her, found Cabin Seven below on the starboard side, and knocked.
There was no light on inside the cabin, and I didn't hear any sound. I looked along the alleyway. About twenty feet down it was that closed door through which I'd earlier blundered. Past it another few feet and on the opposite side of the corridor was the storeroom in which I'd left Navarro. Whether he was still lying in there or not, I didn't know.
I knocked again, louder this time. There was still no answer. I didn't get it; I'd been only a few seconds late, and Elaine couldn't hold that against me. I started worrying. The way things were going on this yacht, anything might happen. I tried the knob, but the door was locked. No sound came from inside the cabin. Maybe she was still up above, with the dancers, I thought. But there was the possibility, too, that she'd come to the cabin minutes ago, to wait for me—and was still inside.
I looked up and down the alleyway; it was empty. Then I stepped back from the cabin wall, slammed my foot into the door. It gave a little, and I kicked it again, near the lock. The door sprang open, and I stepped inside, found the light switch and flipped it on. The room was empty. I figured Elaine was just a little late—then I saw something that changed my mind. In an ashtray on a small table by the neatly made bunk, a cigarette smoldered.
I walked over and looked at it. The cigarette was a filter-tip, and gray ash lay in an unbroken line along the bottom of the tray; the cigarette had remained untouched while burning itself out. But it still smoldered, smoke rising from the last grains of tobacco. A red trace of lipstick colored the filter's edge.
Pulsing Hawaiian music throbbed sensually back aft. I walked toward it. Wooden chairs had been arranged between the bar and the dance floor on the top deck, facing the entertainment now in progress. In the chairs sat most of the party guests aboard, but there was no sign of Elaine's dark hair or white dress.
Uneasiness grew in me. I knew she'd intended to meet me below; I felt sure it was she who'd been in Cabin Seven minutes ago. Something had to be wrong. Something, obviously, had happened to make her change her mind—or make it impossible for her to meet me. But I didn't have anything solid to go on, nothing to tell me what might have caused a change in plans, or who, or why. Something was sure as hell going on here besides the gay party, and I had the feeling it was something more than merely unpleasant. But it was primarily just hunch, feeling, almost a guess, despite what Elaine had told me. So far nothing fit—there wasn't any pattern.
Over Her Dear Body Page 3
