The Second Longest Night

by Stephen Marlowe

  I sat up suddenly. It was still dark in the guest house lobby. Lydia was still screaming.

  I leaped off the sofa, across the floor and up the stairs. On the way up I heard two doors slam, with three quick running steps interspersed. When I reached the landing, a gun went off.

  Something fell heavily behind Del Rey's door. Lydia gave a little whimper. I reached the door, twisted the knob and plunged inside.

  The overhead light was harsh. Ralph was leaning against the long unfinished pine table. Del Rey's firearm collection had been put away, but Ralph held the Magnum .357 by its trigger guard with two fingers. He had a look of silly horror on his face. Silly because he had had several too many to drink and the look of horror was pasted there, the way it is in a third-grade movie, the mouth slack and the eyes big and wide and staring myopically without the benefit of his shell-rimmed glasses.

  Lydia had one hand to her mouth. That belonged to the same movie, but the rest of her did not. The censor could not have permitted it. She was wearing a white dress which had been ripped from right shoulder to waist. It reminded me of what had happened this afternoon with the bath towel. I had the wild notion that it was supposed to remind me of that. It was the same dress Lydia had worn to and from her evening shower. She was still wearing nothing under it and she made inadequate clawing motions with her right hand, trying to lift the ripped fabric up over her shoulder. She fell toward me limply, as a hypnotist will tell you to fall to see if you are a good subject. I caught her and eased her down on a cushioned wooden chair. She sat there staring straight ahead without seeing anything. Her right breast was exposed but she had given up trying to conceal it.

  The muzzle velocity of the Magnum had thrown” Del Rey against the far wall of the room. He had slid down to the floor, where he now was sitting. His lower lip was gone, and his entire jaw. Blood was streaming from the hole which had replaced them, and in case the bullet hadn't gone in at the right angle to take Del Rey's brain out the back of his skull, he had already bled enough to be dead. Automatically, though, I walked over to him and felt his pulse. I thought I felt a couple of faint, erratic skips, but when I tried again I couldn't find them. Someone could call the King Oil dispensary if someone wanted to, but they'd only need a D. O. A. slip.

  I walked over to Ralph and said, “You better give it to me now, boy.” I stuck my hand out for the Magnum and at first I thought Ralph hadn't heard me, but finally he placed the pistol on the palm of my hand. He seemed glad to let go of it.

  “All right,” he said. “All right. All right. I'm coming.” I maneuvered him toward Del Rey's bed. He staggered rather than walked. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his head slumping forward so he could look between his legs at the floor. I lit a cigarette and got it between his lips, but it just dangled there.

  There was enough of Del Rey's Spanish cognac left for a stiff shot for Lydia and one for me. I didn't give Ralph any. Lydia gagged on the cognac but got it down. She said, “Chet, please. I'm still too weak. Cover me.”

  I raised the fabric of her dress and draped it across her shoulder. If she stood up and walked around it would come down again. She said, “There's no one else in the guest house, not even Mr. Hendrickson. He likes to sleep in the shacks down by the water, Paco said. Chet—is he dead?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He was crazy. I'm a married woman. He didn't seem to care. He wouldn't listen when I said no. He tried to rape me.”

  “Why the hell did you have to come in here and visit him?” I asked.

  Ralph said, “The no-good bastard tried to rape my wife. I heard her scream. I saw.” He sounded very drunk. The cigarette fell from his lips. “I went over and picked it up and smoked it myself. “Gimme drink,” Ralph said.

  Lydia leaned forward. The dress came apart again. She squirmed around on the chair and gave me a profile of her covered breast. She said, “Listen to me, both of you. They'll crucify us. He's Venezuelan, he comes from a good family, he's got connections. We're foreigners and now because he's dead a big stink is going to be made about the oil, and they'll blame us. If we stay here and face it, we'll all rot in jail.”

  “Don't look at me, lady,” I said. “All of us, Chet. That's the way they'll see it.” Ralph said, “I think I'm going to throw up.” He leaned forward and rolled clear of Del Rey's bed. He made a loud gagging noise and his mouth shuttered open to rid his system of what he had drunk. He lay on his side on the floor, his knees drawn up.

  “We can get a boat,” Lydia said. “We can row it out into the lake and weigh down the body with something and drop it. For a long time they won't find him. The water's deep. We can clean up in here so they won't know anything for a long time. We could all be back in the States before they found out anything.”

  “Not me, lady,” I said.

  “It's the only way.” Lydia said patiently. She took a deep breath and walked over to Ralph, kneeling beside him and slapping his face. “Get up, Ralph,” she said. “Come on. You've got to snap out of it.”

  “It's all right,” he mumbled. “It's perfectly all right.” I thumbed the Magnum on safety and tucked the muzzle inside my belt. I walked to the telephone on the nightstand near Del Rey's bed.

  “What do you think you're doing?” Lydia asked me.

  “Someone's got to call the police,” I said, but Lydia reached the phone before I did and snatched it away. She sat down on the bed with her hands and the phone behind her.

  “You fool,” she said. “Oh, you stupid, stupid fool. The least it will get you is a few months in some stinking jail down here. It's liable to get you hanged. All of us. What would flay if they asked me? What would Ralph say? I was in here with him. With Paco. You were drinking. You came barging in. You had an argument with Paco and shot him. Isn't that what happened, Ralph? Wouldn't you say so?”

  “It's going to be all right,” Ralph said. I slapped Lydia so hard she fell over on her back on the bed. She lay there with a hand to her face but said, “Well, I would.”

  “I'm not crazy,” I said. “You are. You already said Del Rey tried to rape you. You screamed for help. Ralph came running in. You could say the gun was here all the time. Del Rey has enough artillery for a regiment. They don't have to know Ralph picked the gun up in the shower stalls. It's just a little lie. You could tell them the truth and nothing would happen to you. Now, give me that phone.”

  Lydia shook her head. “I meant what I said, Chet. If you force me to, I'll implicate you. We're foreigners. We wouldn't have a chance.”

  “That's a lot of crap and you know it,” I said. “I know what you're afraid of. If there's a big stink now and you get involved, you're liable to get into trouble for how King Oil hasn't been splitting its take with the Venezuelan government. Or your father will. But if enough time passes before they find Del Rey and if you don't get involved, you can go on making your fortune. Even if they find out what's been happening with the oil profits, you won't be involved. Maybe they'll even give you and the Senator Del Rey's share, if he's made no other provisions. Isn't that it?”

  Lydia shrugged. “Call it anything you like,” she said. She sat up, found the telephone behind her and put it on her lap. She smiled at me. “I'll ring the police,” she said, “if you want. I'll call them and tell them what I saw. You know what that will be.” She cowered away from me as if she expected me to slap her again. Ralph was breathing deeply and regularly.

  Del Rey had paid for what he'd done to Alex Lubrano. Hell, wasn't that one of the reasons I'd come down here? I said, “Look. The answer is no. I'm not involved in this and I don't think you can make the police believe I am. I won't help Ralph or anyone take the body out into the lake, and that's final. But,” I said, “since I had nothing to do with this and don't want to get involved, I wouldn't mind scramming in a hurry. Sure, there'll be a stink. Sure, I don't want any part of it. And if you and Ralph want to scram with me, I won't stop you. That's as far as I'll go, Lydia.”

  She climbed off the bed and cam
e to me, throwing her tanned arms around my neck. She planted a quick kiss on my lips and said, “I think that's a wonderful compromise.”

  “That's swell,” I said. “But first we'll have to wake Ralph and make him fit to travel. Then we'll have to figure out how three people can get out of Venezuela without going near airports or passport officials or things like that.”

  “Oh, that's easy. Especially at night, when the smugglers ply back and forth between Venezuela and Curacao.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I still wasn't crazy about the idea, but I was getting used to it. Why submit to the police down here when I didn't have to? I'd have enough explaining to do for the Washington and Alexandria police, if and when.

  “Then it's settled. I'm going across the hall to get dressed, Chet. If you can get Ralph on his feet and pack your “own things while I pack his—”

  Just then we heard someone on the stairs. Lydia ran to the door and ran back again and looked at me beseechingly.

  “What the hell do you want me to do?” I whispered.

  “Whatever you have to. But if you just sit here, I'll tell them I saw you shoot Del Rey. You think I'm fooling? I'll do it to protect myself and Ralph if you make me.”

  I cursed her and cursed Ralph lying on the floor and even cursed Del Rey, who was dead, although I had wanted to kill him. I reached the door just as Hendrickson hit the landing outside and called, “Hey, Mr. Del Rey! I thought I heard a shot.”

  Lydia offered me the encouragement of a lifted eyebrow. I threw the light switch and plunged the room into darkness, as Hendrickson's heavy footsteps reached the other side of the door. I pulled the Magnum .357 from my belt and waited with it in my hand.

  Hendrickson knocked on the door and said, “Mr. Del Rey, is everything okay?”

  I said nothing. The darkness was complete. And then Lydia called in what she thought was a man's voice, “Yes, of course.” People will do that. They trip themselves up on the little things, on the small, foolish, unexpected details. Lydia should have kept her mouth shut.

  “Hey, who's that?” Hendrickson demanded.

  I had my hand lightly on the doorknob so I would know the instant he started to turn it. The instant came. I pulled the door in toward me and Hendrickson loomed there, a shadow in the doorway. I swatted him across the head with the Magnum and stood clear as he fell.

  “You'd better tie him and gag him,” was all Lydia said as she slipped by me into the hall.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “KEEP WALKING, DAMN you,” Lydia told her husband. “If you stop now, you'll fall asleep.”

  Unseen insects were making small wing-rubbing talk all around us. We were down at the edge of the water with its brackish smell and its oil smell. Thatch-roofed huts were silhouetted high against the sky on their tall stilts. A woman screamed not very enthusiastically in one of them, as if she had screamed like this many nights before, every night, but still was beaten by her husband. A hard sadistic man's laugh cut the scream short, and then we were alone in the stillness once more.

  “It's five miles along the lake to Altagracia,” Lydia said. “How far do you think we've come?.”

  “Less than half the way,” I told her. She was walking ahead, down along the edge of the lake. I trailed by half a dozen paces, supporting Ralph. He wasn't saying much and he wasn't using his muscles much. The mosquito squadrons had declared war on us ever since we left the King Oil guest house.

  “Just lemme get some sleep,” Ralph said.

  Instead, Lydia lit him a cigarette. I told him to inhale deeply, and he began to walk a little better. I began to wonder how long Hendrickson would stay out. I hadn't tied him. He had been breathing all right, and not bleeding, when I left him.

  The King Oil huts were behind us now. The beach was a narrow strip along the edge of the water, cleared of jungle growth because the tide came in twice daily through the strait between Maracaibo and Altagracia. But the jungle was a black wall ten yards to our right. On our left, the King Oil derricks were silhouetted against starlight. And, I kept on telling myself—because I seemed to be the only one particularly concerned—we were running away from murder.

  Shortly before dawn we reached the outskirts of Altagracia—shacks of corrugated tin and badly weathered wood and a strong smell of coffee cutting through the smells of sea water and oil. A few sleepy-looking fellows were already loading a big old Diesel-driven schooner down at the pier.

  “Curacao?” I said to one of the fellows, but he just looked at me blankly and went up the schooner's ramp, a sack on his left shoulder and his hand on his left hip to help support it.

  “Hey!” I called. “Where you bound for?” After a while a head appeared over the side of the schooner. It had a halo of white hair and a mouth which lacked several teeth in front. “Aruba,” the mouth said. “Venezuelan?” I asked. “No; senor. Dutch.”

  “Taking passengers?” I asked the old man with the white hair.

  He said that they didn't usually. He cackled then began to cough, spitting into the lake. He said he didn't see why they couldn't.

  “Thank God,” Lydia said. “My arms are numb.” She'd started out with two grips, one weighing her down on either side. I'd quickly disposed of mine after it became apparent Ralph would need help walking. Lydia had finally got rid of one of hers— Ralph's, I guessed. She showed me her hands as we went up the gangway of the schooner. They were raw and wet, covered with broken blisters.

  “Americanos?” said the white-haired man. I didn't answer, but he shrugged and went on, “I have a little English. In Altagracia it is important since much business is done with Americanos on the lake. It takes us twenty hours to make Aruba, for which the fare is a hundred dollars.”

  “That's high,” I said.

  “A hundred dollars,” he smiled, “for each. I ask myself why three Americanos would wish to leave Venezuela in this fashion. I tell myself, Hernando, it is muy importante, so they must be ready with much dinero.”

  “We'll give you a hundred dollars for all of us,” I said. Hernando shrugged again, then shook his head. He was smiling when Lydia gave me a fist full of money and said, “Oh, pay him what he wants, Chet.”

  I handed the money to the old man without counting it. He called out something in Spanish and two young fellows appeared, looked at us without interest, and unfastened the schooner's mooring lines. The east was now aglow with pre-dawn light. Somewhere off in the jungle to the east, a red howler monkey let out its shrieking wail. After all that had happened here, it was very appropriate. . . .

  “The cook gave me something for my hands,” Lydia said. We were seated on deck under a, tattered, spray-stiffened canvas canopy. There was no space available for us below decks. The old schooner had been chugging and puffing and making around ten knots all morning and into the early afternoon, We had cleared the narrow neck of Lake Maracaibo and now were moving across the hot, sun-reflecting mirror of the Gulf of Venezuela.”

  Lydia showed us her hands. Ralph, who had sweated out most of the alcohol, nodded. Lydia's hands were covered with grease—probably lard or butter. It had taken the sting out of them.

  Hernando came over to us. His skin was tanned leather, his chest hollow and hairless. The heat didn't seem to bother him. “If you have reason to fear police he said, “you had better hide for a while below decks. We make land at Amuay in twenty minutes.”

  “I thought we were going to Aruba,” I said. “Is Amuay part of Venezuela?”

  “Si. Amuay lies on the cape below Aruba. Paraguana, we call the cape. There La Estrella del Lago puts down cargo and takes on other cargo. This will take several hours, after which we will go very quickly to Aruba. Will you want to hide?”

  I asked him, “Do you have a radio on The Star of the Lake?”

  I am only a poor man, senor.”

  “Then we hide,” I told Lydia and her husband, “unless you want to chance it.”

  They didn't want to chance it. As the green headlands of the cape and its port, Amuay,
came slowly into view out of the northeast, one of Hernando's boys conducted us below decks. The sun was not so hot down there, but the air was so close you could hardly breathe. We sat it out hunched over for three solid sweating hours. There was the slow plodding of feet on deck overhead, the tired creak of boom and winch, an occasional shouted order. We shared the stern deck of The Star of the Lake with heaps of uncured hide.

  The suffocating heat got to Ralph first. He surrendered with a long sigh and sank back exhausted on the hides. “Will he be all right?” Lydia asked me.

  I licked the sweat on my lips. It Was barely salty. “He needs salt,” I said. “I think he'll be all right.”

  “I'm drenched. I'm glad you can't see me. I'm glad it's dark in here. I never felt so uncomfortable in all my life.”

  “It's probably freezing in Washington,” I said.

  “Shut up, damn you,” Lydia told me, and then laughed. Her hand groped over and found mine in the darkness. She squeezed it and said, “Thank you, Chet. I didn't have a chance to thank you before. You—didn't have to do this.”

  “That's a lot of talk—after how you threatened me.”

  “Don't say that, Chet. Sure, I threatened you. I had to. But do you think I really would have done what I said? Do you?”

  I said I didn't know. I said she was like her sister that way. And I said it was too goddamn hot to talk.

  “Well, I just wanted you to know I'm grateful.”

  At that moment, The Star of the Lake's engine began to throb. We waited it out another fifteen minutes, then a hatch opened to my left and Hernando's white head was silhouetted against the blue sky. “Okay,” he said.

  We helped Ralph out on deck and under the canvas awning. Hernando surprised us with a handful of salt tablets. We each chased down a couple with some tepid water and while Lydia spoke soothingly to Ralph I watched the green cape and the sun-parched white town of Amuay fade away behind us. Lydia was smoking a cigarette and sharing it with Ralph. Her hand trembled from too much heat and not enough salt. She wore a white dress which was darkened and plastered to her at shoulder and breast and flank with sweat.