Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  She nodded and looked up at me timorously. “That was how I got involved with Girgis and the hashish in the first place. That’s how I got to know him.”

  “How did you get involved?”

  “Leonid came to me.” She shrugged. “About two years ago. He asked me if I would carry something to Paris.”

  “Who did?” I said. “Who came to you?”

  “Well,” she said, and swallowed. “Leonid.”

  That was some kind of a lie. But I couldn’t tell what about. “And he didn’t tell you what it was you’d be carrying. Is that it?”

  “Oh, yes. He told me. He showed it to me. He had had some special Vuitton luggage made with false bottoms. In Rome. He bought the luggage in Paris and took it to Rome somewhere and had it remade. I was to carry those. That was all I did. He handled all the details himself. I just delivered the bags to an address. They were sent back to me later at the hotel. He said I’d make a great carrier for him. With my title, and my style, and my social contacts. I thought it was a great lark. And he paid me handsomely.”

  “By God,” I said. “You’ve got nerve. So you’re the European delivery boy.” I still could barely believe it. “Do you have any idea what would happen to you if you got caught? How many years you’d be in jail? How did you get yourself mixed up in this?”

  She gave me a pale smile. “Money. It’s really very simple: Just money. All I really have is this house here on Tsatsos, and barely enough money to run it. He knew my situation. He knew that I had no money to winter in Paris; would have to live on Tsatsos year round, unless I had extra money. So he arranged for me to earn it. Can you imagine what it would be like, living here in winter alone, with everyone gone?”

  Incredible. “Your social life,” I said.

  She didn’t answer. “I love my social life.”

  “What about the rich ex-husband? The Count? What about all the expensive alimony?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “All his money goes to transporting handsome young boys around the capitals of Europe. He’s spent his entire fortune on it and is swiftly spending everything he has left. All I really have is just barely enough to run this house he gave me. Why do you think I told you I couldn’t afford your fees?”

  “Couldn’t you take him to court?”

  “And have him exposed as a homosexual?” Chantal said. She smiled. It was a very European smile. “Anyway, a court probably wouldn’t award me additional money. To winter in Paris every year.”

  “So it all comes out,” I said, and grinned. “The dirt. For money. Like everyone else, it comes down to the money. You rich people ain’t much better than us lower classes, are you? When you haven’t got the money?”

  “In a way I’m glad you’ve found it all out. I’ve been trying to quit, but they wouldn’t let me. It’s not fun any more. Not now, with all the publicity about dope. And all these damned American agents running around all over Europe.

  “But I could never quite bring myself to tell you. And it was never that overt. They never tried to threaten me. They were too polite. But when I said I wanted to stop, they always talked me out of it. And I always let them.”

  “Sure. Meantime two people have been killed.”

  “Do you think I haven’t lain awake thinking about it?”

  “No. I don’t think you have. Not much.

  “But I don’t understand how you could let them run you like that.” I thought a minute. “They. You keep saying they. Did you have an affair with Kirk?”

  “Good heavens, no. Jim? I’d never have an affair with him. Jim thinks he’s a ladies’ man. Kirk loves them and leaves them. He’s an oaf.”

  “He’s back with Jane Duval now,” I said, and watched her face.

  “Oh, her. She’s had affairs with half the people on the island. She even had an affair with your Sweet Marie.”

  “I know all about that,” I said.

  “Jim had an affair with your Sweet Marie, too,” Chantal smiled. “Did you know that?”

  I looked at her blankly. Something had touched at my mind.

  “He did?” I said, vaguely.

  A fading echo, a lost laugh, a piece of burnt newsprint browning in a fire. I reached down in and fished around for it, and it slithered away from me. Had Marie ever mentioned an affair with Kirk to me?

  I remembered her telling me, guiltily, about the affair with Jane Duval. Very clearly.

  I leaned against the swing support. I could suddenly see Marie’s face in front of me as real as if it were there, clear blue eyes, wide mouth, blonde down on the always tremulous lip. “Did you know I had an affair with Jane Duval? Hand me those pants.” Had she ever mentioned Kirk?

  “What’s the matter with you?” Chantal said. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I’ve just thought of something,” I said. “Something very important. Listen, I’ve got to go.”

  I didn’t remember whether she said good night or not.

  Outside the garden door I stopped and leaned back against the wall a while and looked up at the clear star-freckled, star-marked sky.

  It didn’t take it long to come. Quite suddenly, like a brick dropped on the top of my head, it all fell into place. And I remembered that Marie hadn’t mentioned Kirk.

  It had been there all along, plain as the nose on my face, and as close in front of me, all the time I was suspecting that poor crazy dumb kid, Chuck. I wondered if Pekouris had ever suspected it.

  I pushed away from the wall and started down the hill to the harbor and the house.

  But now that I had the son of a bitch, how was I going to prove it? How was I going to catch the son of a bitch out and prove it?

  That was going to take some thinking.

  Chapter 54

  BACK AT THE HOUSE I put out all the lights but one, and got a new Scotch bottle and ice and a glass. I lay down on one of the couches in front of the fireplace, the Scotch and ice on the floor beside me.

  When I leaned my weight on my left arm, or leaned on my left elbow, my side still sent shooting pains through me. Well, to hell with that. I sipped cold Scotch.

  When I put it all together correctly, it fell into place so naturally. There was no longer any doubt. When you knew it, you were amazed you hadn’t seen it sooner. But they always seemed like that, cases. But how was I going to prove it? I didn’t give a damn about their goddamned heroin ring. I could break it up. Or they could go on running it. I didn’t care, as long as I got that son of a bitch for killing Marie.

  I settled myself, and winced, and sipped some Scotch, and started cudgeling it.

  I was still there the next morning at 8:15 when the old woman came padding in and touched me on the shoulder and woke me.

  The Scotch bottle was still sitting on the floor, half empty. The ice had melted. The glass was lying on its side in a wet spot.

  I was no nearer to my fourth down quarterback’s sneak touchdown solution than I’d been the night before.

  I had dreamed about Chantal. It was not an original dream. But it was vivid and horrible. I had dreamed she was being caught, and there was nothing I could do to help her. They were going to send her away for 20 years, or some awful term like that. Pekouris was there, and I tried to buy him off with every nickel I possessed in the world. Even my wife’s alimony. But somebody, Kronitis, was paying him more. More than I could ever hope to scrape together. And there was nothing I could do.

  I got up and went upstairs and took a quick spit bath in the lousy tub and shaved and put on a pair of trunks and a fresh shirt to hide my bandage and came back down.

  It was working up to being another hot day. I wondered if there was some way I could use the heroin ring itself? But I couldn’t think of any way.

  Coffee tasted as bitter as defeat in old age. I got a Scotch and soda, instead. I sprawled on a couch in the living room. I didn’t even want to go out on my porch. I was like a man trying to glissade a curling stone that didn’t have any handle. After an hour the old woman got on my nerves so m
uch, padding around and pretending to clean, that I sent her away for the day. I watched her go down the front walk and down the road to Dmitri’s where she stopped and sat down. Spending my money. I suddenly hated her. Pointlessly. Outside, people were playing. I hated them, too.

  I went back and got another Scotch. If I couldn’t use the heroin ring itself, what could I use? There didn’t seem to be anything. I sprawled back out on the couch. Then I sat up. Then I lay down again.

  There was a discreet knock at the door, and Jane Duval walked in without waiting to be asked.

  “I saw your housekeeper at the taverna,” she smiled. “She said you sent her away for the day.” She came up the three steps from the hall.

  “I thought I’d come by and see how you liked our party night before last. You missed the best part. It went on after you left.”

  She was in her Mother Hubbard dress, and her quirky eyebrows were at work, and the child wasn’t with her. There seemed to be a secret, vastly superior knowledge in her smile she kept turning on me. She was pretty obviously here to be seduced, and there didn’t seem to be much doubt in her mind that she would be.

  The sheer dumbness of it, or the sheer vanity, whichever it was, was flabbergasting. It was like something out of a two-bit movie, after all the errant subtleties my mind had been playing around with the last few hours.

  “You’ve been brooding about me, haven’t you, Mr. Davies? Since the other night?”

  I was still sprawled out on the couch. She came on in and sat down on the other couch, across from me. I looked at her, and did not get up. An idea had come into my mind from nowhere, from the left-field bleachers. I started playing with it. There might be a way I could use her.

  “A little,” I said, and grinned. “But I guess I’ll survive it.” I let an amused look come into my eyebrows.

  “I could tell. You know, I meant it when I asked you what you’d charge for a divorce case.”

  “You and Sonny aren’t married, are you?” I said.

  “Oh, we’re married. He just doesn’t like people to know it. Sonny has a lot of money, you know.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I’m interested in other things. How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-four.”

  “Then, you graduated from Bennington at twenty?”

  “Nineteen. I was a prodigy.” She raised her head high on her neck, like some actress in a film take, and looked out the end of the room over the harbor. “I’m sick of living like this. I want bright lights, and music, and movement, and people. I hate this living like a bum.”

  “What about the revolution?”

  “You don’t have to be a bum to be a revolutionary.”

  “You don’t, huh?” I didn’t pursue that. “I understood you were pretty stuck on Con Taylor. Weren’t you?”

  “Yes. I still am. I like Con a lot. But he’s basically a weakling.”

  “But you’ve been seeing Kirk since you got back, haven’t you?”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment. She seemed to be trying to figure out which answer I wanted to hear. “Of course.”

  I gave her my wild old man look. “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “Do I?” I wasn’t even having to invent my lines.

  She moved, lithely, two steps, and swung her behind from her couch across to mine, and sat down beside my bare feet. “You liked my little trick, did you, of swimming up beside your boat? I could tell you liked it.”

  “I liked it fine. It bothered me a little that Sonny was right behind us. Didn’t it bother you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “Does Sonny know you’re here now?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. Does it matter?” She started playing with my ankle.

  “Not to me,” I said, and grinned.

  “Well then?”

  I didn’t say anything. For answer I put my bare foot against her thigh in the Mother Hubbard.

  “It was very dark,” Jane said. “Did you see all of me?”

  “I saw all of you.” Christ, she was writing all of my lines for me.

  “Did you like what you saw?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But what will you bet Sonny isn’t watching this house right now?”

  Jane smiled. “He would never do that. He ‘understands’ me. Would it bother you if he was?”

  “Me? Not me. I would like it even better,” I said.

  She laughed, and stood up. “It’s suddenly gotten terribly warm in here.” She stripped off the Mother Hubbard. Under it was the bikini of two nights ago. She sat back down, this time at my waist level, and put her hand up under my shirt.

  “Hey. What’s this?”

  “Adhesive tape,” I said.

  “Is that from your fight the other night?”

  “Yes. I guess one of the horsecab horses must have stepped on me.”

  Jane put her face down against my jawline. “Poor darlig.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I said. “Do you know where Kirk is now?” I whispered into her ear.

  “No. I don’t know. He’s disappeared, for a couple of days. Since the night of our party.”

  “What would you say if I told you where he is right now, and that he’s all alone?” I whispered.

  She sat back up and looked at me. “I wouldn’t say anything. Not with you here.”

  I made my voice as ambiguous as I could. “If I told you where Kirk was, would you go to him?”

  She looked puzzled. She gave me a long look. “Is that what you want me to do?”

  I grinned. “Maybe.”

  She thought a minute. “Would you go with me?”

  I grinned again. “Maybe. After all, we’re all friends.”

  A sudden kind of hot rapacious smile of delight came over her face. “Is that what you like?”

  I grinned a third time. But avoided a direct answer. “He’s at an old unused villa around the corner of the island. I think it’s owned by some corporation. You know the one I mean?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were as bright as museum-lit sapphires. “So that is what you like. You naughty boy. What’s he doing over there now?”

  “He’s taken the Polaris there. I don’t know. I think he’s just getting away from here.”

  Jane touched my chest again, where the tape was. She didn’t say anything.

  “Have you ever been there with him?” I asked. I was willing to bet my roll she had.

  She nodded. “A couple of times.”

  I didn’t know whether he had let her in on the heroin lab secret. I expected not. “I happen to know he’d like to see you.” After a pause, I said, “Maybe I would come along later.”

  Without a word, her eyes even brighter than backlit sapphires now, she stood up and put her long dress back on. “When?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked at my watch. “Maybe right after lunch? Sooner, if I can. But I’m hungry.”

  There was a kind of sly look of secret triumph on her face. She started for the door without a word. Then she turned back, “I knew there was something delicious about you.”

  “Maybe it would be better not to tell him about me. Let it be a surprise.”

  She thought about this, and frowned.

  “You use your own judgment,” I grinned.

  She gave me a big rapacious smile. “A surprise is even better.” She went out.

  I walked to the windows and watched her ride off on her bike down below. Then I looked at my watch again. I had all the time in the world. I made myself a drink.

  I was suddenly feeling great. I was feeling so great I was half afraid sparks might start shooting out the ends of my fingers, and ignite me.

  I went to the lock-up closet and got my briefcase out and got my two guns out of it and put them side by side on the green desk blotter. They looked very pretty and very lethal, on the green backing. Display pieces.

  Chapter 55

  I HAD MAYBE THREE HOURS to kill. I spent almost an hour on the guns. You would
n’t think that much could be done to a couple of simple, double-action short-barreled .38s, but it could. Neither of them had been used in quite a while. I cleaned them, and oiled them and wiped them down, and checked all the moving parts, the cylinder swing-outs, the trigger pulls. Then I did a couple of other little things. For what I wanted. For the kind of fight I expected, and hoped I would be in control of. If there was any fight at all.

  I had once been an ardent student of ballistics and trajectory. I easily found enough tools in Con Taylor’s kitchen tool drawer for what I wanted to do.

  It was kind of a long shot, my plan. My plan for Kirk. It was one of those dime-novel tricks. But it ought to work. Especially if Jane Duval did her part right, it would work.

  I still couldn’t be sure she would not tell Kirk I was coming. But the beauty of my plan was that it would work whether she told him or not. It would still work, even if she told him.

  I put the guns in one of those little airline satchels that was lying around the house and stowed them on board the boat. I found Sonny, and told him I would want him and the boat a little later. Then I went back to the house.

  I sat on my porch a while. I was too keyed up to read. I didn’t want to drink any more, not with the job I had in front of me. Finally I remembered my precipitate departure from Chantal last night, and went in and called her.

  “How are you feeling?” I said when the maid finally got her on the phone.

  “I’m feeling all right,” she said. “Is there any reason I should not be?”

  “No,” I said. “None at all. What are you doing?”

  “I’m sitting in bed, having my mango with lemon juice, and my tea. And reading yesterday’s two-day-old paper that was brought to me this morning. The sun is shining in my window.”

  I remembered there was a phone extension in the bedroom. “Sounds great.”

  “It is great.”

  I remembered that at one point she had lied to me again last night. Something about Kronitis. About how Kronitis inveigled her into becoming his carrier.

  “You remember what we talked about last night?” I said.

  Her voice got guarded. “Yes?”