Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  It had been replaced by a rather uninspired landscape. And the perpetually burning light above it was turned off. Chantal was still outside. I walked over to the new painting and switched on the fight. The landscape of a Greek village scene leaped out at me, even less good in the light. I stood looking at it. Chantal came in and looked at me looking.

  “What have you done with your painting?” I said.

  “It’s gone,” she said, and made a strange smile. It was half harsh, and half pitiable, pleading.

  “I see that. But why?”

  “Because I don’t like it any more,” she said, and her eyes flashed a kind of fire. “I’m sick of it. I often change my paintings around, when I get tired of them.” It was a cold fire.

  I was willing to bet she had never changed that one before. “So you want me to pack up, and leave, and get off the island, and not come back, do you?”

  “I think that would be the smartest, and most gentlemanly, thing for you to do, yes. Under the circumstances.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it seems like awfully short notice. Only last night you were telling me how you were falling in love with me.”

  Her face got stiffer. “Maybe that’s part of the reason.”

  “Maybe. But I think we ought to get this thing straight about me working for you. I’m not working for you. And I haven’t been since the day after Girgis was killed.”

  “Well, you told me you were going to help me. And I assumed you were going on helping me. I thought if the reason you were involving yourself in all this was that, then I wanted to tell you not to do it on my account.”

  “You know better than that,” I said.

  “No. I thought even before Marie was killed, that it was me you were protecting; or trying to protect.”

  “Assuming I did leave. What would you do about the rest of the rent on the house? What would you do about the rest of the cost of Sonny’s boat?”

  “I’d try to get what refunds I could on them, and return the money to Freddy Tarkoff,” Chantal said, and smiled.

  “Fat chance of getting refunds,” I said.

  She shrugged, lamely, and moved her head. She didn’t answer.

  I stood and studied her, and tried to figure out what it meant. Because it didn’t make sense. Even if she had fallen wildly in love with me, it didn’t. And I didn’t think she was that much in love with me. And I was glad. Because I wasn’t that much in love with her. And I thought she knew that, too.

  “Have you been talking to Kronitis?” I said.

  It was a shot in the dark. Her face suddenly got all funny, and she blinked to try and hide it.

  “Leonid? Why would I be talking to Leonid Kronitis about you?” She was lying so obviously that it wasn’t even necessary for me to comment on it.

  “I just thought,” I said. I grinned. “You’re the second client—if you’re a client, and there’s some question about that—who’s fired me today. Kronitis is the other one. You remember I told you that I had another client?”

  “I don’t know anything about any of that,” Chantal said staunchly. “And I don’t care. I’m only concerned about me and my life.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Have you maybe been talking to Jim Kirk, too?”

  That got her too. Her face seemed to get even flatter, in a valiant but fruitless effort at expressionlessness. She was so expressionless that it expressed.

  “Jim Kirk has nothing to do with it. With anything.”

  “I wish I was sure of that. Do you realize that Jim Kirk could easily be the murderer I’m looking for?” I said.

  “Jim? Jim Kirk could never do a thing like that.”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure of it.”

  “Oh, I just wish you’d go away,” Chantal said bitterly. “I just want you to get out, and get off this island. That’s what I wish.”

  “Not much chance,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t like being here any better than you like having me. As soon as I get this thing settled up, I’ll be long gone. But until I do get it settled, you better get used to seeing me.”

  “There’s another very good reason you ought to leave,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Because I’m going to leave myself. In a very few days I’m going to have to leave and make a trip to Paris. In two or three days probably. A friend there is sick and needs me. I simply can’t let her down. So I won’t be here for the rest of your—” she paused, “your ‘vacation.’”

  “Well, I’ll miss you,” I said. And I guessed I would. It didn’t change anything.

  “Even that isn’t enough to make you change your mind and leave? No me?”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said. “I’m here for what my generation used to call The Duration. I’m not leaving till the denouement.”

  “And you suspect Jim Kirk?”

  “As a matter of fact, you may be right about Kirk,” I said. “I may already have found the killer. I picked that boy Chuck up today, and got hold of his machete. It’s got blood all over it.” I watched her.

  She seemed totally nonplused. “What? Who?”

  “One of the hippie kids. So maybe you can rest easy about Kirk after all. Inspector Pekouris seems to think it was the kid.”

  Her face seemed to clear. “Well, then you’ve got the whole thing all worked out.”

  “Not quite. It still has to be proved.”

  She looked completely puzzled. “Then this boy did it? You think this hippie boy is the murderer?”

  “It’s possible. It looks right now like it’s him.”

  “Well, you see? I told you Jim Kirk couldn’t do a thing like that. Why didn’t you tell me about this boy in the first place?”

  “Because you surprised me. When you told me you were going away,” I said.

  “And you’ll miss me?”

  “Yes. I sure will. I sure as hell will.”

  She gave me a sudden smile, that was making the corners of her lips tremble. Then she put her hands up to her nose and mouth, and turned and walked away.

  She walked clear across the room to the bar, and stood fiddling with the bottles, and a glass. She looked as if she were about to make herself a drink, but then she didn’t. Instead she turned around and faced me, and her face had completely changed. I couldn’t describe the change. But she wasn’t smiling.

  “Do you think I don’t know why you’re doing it?” she said, harshly.

  “Doing what?” I said.

  “Helping me.”

  I didn’t answer. She had lost me somewhere, and I wasn’t getting the point.

  “Looking after me, taking care of me, helping me with all this mess? Making love to me, even? Do you think I’m a fool?” Chantal said. “Well, I do know.” She stopped. I didn’t say anything.

  “Old age,” she said. “Yes. Old age. You see it in me just like you see it in yourself. You’re sorry for me.”

  She was on the verge of crying.

  “Well, I don’t want your goddamned pity. Or anybody else’s.” Her shoulders drooped and suddenly she seemed to come all apart. “You and your goddamned old age.”

  I was just beginning to get the point, which as far as I could see hadn’t followed from anything else we’d said. She was pulling an intuition on me—and a pretty profound one—right out of the hat. I was just getting it and she apparently had finished. She began to weep.

  “There’s nothing anybody can do about that,” I said softly. “Nobody’s ever found anything to do about it yet.”

  She didn’t make any answer, and kept her hands up to her nose and mouth. Her shoulders were moving.

  So I stepped to her and put my arms around her, and for a moment she collapsed against me. Then she pulled herself away and straightened up.

  “I’ve got to go out to dinner in a few minutes,” she said, glaring at me. “I’m going to look just awful. I’m going to look like bloody hell.”

  “Go upstairs and wash your face,” I said. “With cold water. And I�
��ll go.”

  “Will I see you later on tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Probably not.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her why. “But maybe I’ll call you late. And maybe tomorrow night.”

  As I left, I was wondering if I would get a call from Pekouris in the morning, about young Chuck. It would be interesting to see.

  Chapter 50

  I SHOULDN’T HAVE WALKED BACK. By the time I got back to my house, my groin was aching badly. But I hadn’t wanted to hang around Chantal’s and wait the time it would take a horsecab to come, if I called one. My side was better, though, and less feverish, after the rest I’d been able to give it from violent movement during the afternoon.

  There was a note pinned to my door when I got back, inviting me to a party on board Sonny’s caique. The note was signed by both Sonny and Jane, and also by Jim Kirk. Apparently Kirk was co-hosting the party. I took it inside with me.

  It seemed a bit much to me, having Kirk sign the note too. But Jane Duval wasn’t my business, and never had been.

  In the house I put on the lights and got myself a drink. It had been after 7 o’clock when I went up to Chantal’s and now it was dark. The party on the caique was both visible and audible from my porch.

  I debated whether I should go to it, and decided I probably should. Especially if Kirk was going to be there. I didn’t feel like it. I hadn’t had any lunch to speak of, but I wasn’t hungry. The old woman was gone. I didn’t feel like eating the dog vomit old Dmitrios passed off as food, again. Not the way I was hurting.

  After a while I got myself a second drink and went upstairs and changed my slacks and got another shirt and put my sandals back on and went down and out and down to the taverna dock to borrow a skiff and row myself out.

  The party was in full swing. Sonny came up on deck to get me when I hollered, and took me down. It was so archetypal of hippie parties that it could have been staged. Everybody was belowdecks, and there wasn’t all that much room, so that they were all pushed up together. They liked that. It was funky, unkempt, physically dirty, with overtones of potential orgy. The hash smoke was thick. Bottles of the local retsina were all over. Steve and Diane were there, and Georgina Taylor, Sonny and Jane, and Kirk, and some of the hippie couples from the Construction. Jane Duval was no housekeeper. The baby was asleep in a messy bunk in the roar of the record player. Life on board centered around the expensive, battery-operated record player, not around the galley.

  The belowdecks was one big room without bulkheads, and the whole forward part of it was one large bed from planking to planking that could accommodate six sleeping people. Four couples were curled up on it. There was a lot of necking and near nude sex play by the couples, and not much reservation about changing partners in the middle. I’d seen it all a hundred thousand times.

  The swing-table had been taken down for the occasion, and once in a while two or three couples danced the jerky freak dances in the compressed floor space.

  “There’s some whisky hidden over here,” Sonny whispered to me, grinning foolishly. He was well stoned. “But only you and Jim are drinking it. Nobody else knows where it is. I’ll show you.”

  Sonny and Kirk seemed to be the greatest of buddies. Georgina sat smoking hash and drinking retsina happily. The only one who seemed unhappy was Jane Duval.

  I got a water tumbler of straight whisky and put the bottle back in its hiding place and sat down on the edge of a bunk. There were three of them, two of them one above the other, in addition to the huge bed forward. No sooner had I staked out my territory than Stevie-boy came over and squatted down beside me.

  Steve was expansive. He was also finely stoned. He had been over to see Chuck, he told me smugly. He seemed very happy about Chuck. Chuck was fine, he told me, except he had broken his glasses.

  “Oh?” I said. “How did he do that?”

  “He stepped on them. He put them down by his pack on the dock to go in for a swim, and when he came back out he stepped right on them. Snapped them in the middle. But he’s got them taped together.”

  “Pretty stupid,” I said. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  “No. He can’t see a thing when he hasn’t got them on. He just didn’t see them.”

  He could see well enough to ball-kick somebody, I wanted to say. But I didn’t say it. “Mmm,” I said. “And how is that machete of his?”

  “Well, he seems to have lost it,” Steve said and grinned. “I don’t know exactly where. Somewhere in the water. Somewhere in the water between here and St. Friday’s.”

  “It would be hard to find, then.”

  “Yes. I guess it would,” he grinned.

  I nodded. “Smart.” Apparently Chuck had told him nothing about our encounter, or our fight. Apparently he had lied to Steve about throwing the machete off the cliff, too.

  I didn’t say anything, and Steve wandered away. He looked supremely, smugly happy. I got another glass of whisky and sat back down gingerly on my bunk. People seemed to know it was my territory and left it alone. Or maybe it was because I was directly below the snoring little girl. I sipped the whisky and looked around.

  Jane Duval reigned over her party with a regal contempt, it seemed. She seemed to have a sardonic, but solid, sense of her total superiority. The contempt, to me, seemed only a very thinnest coating over a real and very deep anger, expressed by those expressive eyebrows of hers. In the heat in the close space she had taken off her tent dress. The scantiest of bikinis showed off that body of hers.

  But her attitude toward me was a surprise. After a while she got up and came over and pretended to look at the baby and then sat down by me. Instead of hating me now, she acted intrigued, even flirtatious, in her contemptuous way.

  I had assumed it was Kirk who wanted me invited. But now I wasn’t so sure.

  “I’ve never met a real ‘private dick’ before,” she said, laying heavy on the Private dick. “I always thought they were ugly dirty little men with thick glasses. Like shyster lawyers.”

  “Not today,” I said. “Today they all look like CPAs. They’re all computer analysts. I’m a vanishing breed.”

  “You must have an exciting life. In your grubby little way.”

  “In my grubby little way,” I said. If that was what passed for sophisticated repartee by her, Bennington must be worse than I had heard.

  “What would you charge me for a divorce case, for example?” she said.

  “I never take divorce cases. Too messy,” I said. I grinned. “Except, of course, if it’s a very, uh, special friend of mine.”

  “The man? Or the girl?” she said.

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Do you know that I have slept with every man in this room? Except you?” Jane said.

  “Bully for you,” I said. “Were they one-nighters, or longer liaisons?”

  “It depended on the man,” she smiled. “Entirely on the man.”

  I didn’t feel like going on with it, so I didn’t answer. When I didn’t, she got up and flounced across the cabin to the other small bunk, waving her bottom at me like a red flag in a bull’s pasture.

  I couldn’t understand her change of attitude. Maybe it was just my continuing indifference. Indifference was one of the best tools to use on women that there was. If they weren’t interested in you, they respected and liked your indifference to them. If they were interested, it needled them and fired them up until they were breathing steam.

  Anyway, her Bennington credentials were no great thing to me. They didn’t aid me at all in what I was looking for.

  But it was Jim Kirk not Jane I’d come to watch. And he was very out of it and very cold. He took no part in the sexual antics and he didn’t smoke the hash. He stayed aloof and close to the whisky. I still couldn’t get a proper fix on him in the whole business.

  At one point in the festivities the hash smoke and armpits were getting to me and I went up on deck for some air. A minute later Kirk followed me, and said he wanted to talk to m
e.

  We went out on the point of the bow.

  “You’re a pretty hard guy to convince,” Kirk grinned.

  “About what?” I said.

  “About leaving the island.”

  “So it was you who got Chantal to jump on me?” I grinned back.

  He didn’t answer. There was absolutely no fear in him and you could feel it. There was a strong streak of meanness and you could feel that too.

  “I guess I am hard to convince,” I said. “I’ve been beaten up, shot at, threatened, crotch-kicked, and fired from a job I never got paid for anyway. What else can they do to me?”

  “You’ve been sticking your nose in some things that aren’t any of your business. By mistake, maybe. Inadvertently. But some people don’t like that. So far you’ve been lucky. Very lucky.”

  I decided I’d try him with the same thing I did Chantal. “Well, the people you’re talking about won’t have to worry any more. Because I’ll be leaving here soon. I’ve found the killer.”

  He was totally surprised, like Chantal. He began to look pleased. “You have?”

  “I think so. It’s one of these kids from the Construction. I won’t tell you the name yet, but Pekouris seems to agree with me. The kid had a blood-stained machete on him. I lifted it. I’ve got it hidden away. He used the same machete to do a guy in in Mexico, it seems.”

  Kirk was overjoyed. “Crazy Chuck. Well, that is great news. So the whole thing is finished.”

  “Yeah. I’ll hand it over to Pekouris.”

  “Fine. I always hoped somebody would be able to pin the guy who did in my friend Girgis,” Kirk said piously.

  I wanted to laugh. “So those people you mentioned can stop worrying.”

  “If I knew who they were,” Kirk smiled, “I’d go tell them myself.”

  “Too bad you don’t know them.”

  Kirk’s smile turned into a mean grin. “Because it wouldn’t be wise for you to linger around here too long. In spite of your fantastic luck.” With a delicate movement that bespoke fine reflexes under all his meat, he pulled his hand from his pocket. “Because see this?”