Forth into Light

by Gordon Merrick

  George’s mind sprang to attention. Had Joe been among the group last night? If he was going to return the money, why didn’t he do it and get it over with? “I might have another beer,” he said, lifting his arm and snapping his fingers.

  Joe made a face. “Beer? Beer’s all right first thing in the morning to take the taste of coffee out of your mouth. But lord, man, the morning’s getting on. I think I’ll have a gin. It’s very good in hot weather. Not martinis. Martinis are no good without ice. But gin and soda’s not bad.”

  “Have you passed this information on to Dr. Barth?” George asked. “Or are you saving it for your doctor’s dissertation?”

  Joe drank with pedantic application, as if he were engaged on a research project.

  “You probably could do something with Scriptural references to wines and spirits,” Peterson reflected. The child with the flapping apron appeared at George’s summons and they ordered.

  “What’s your problem?” George asked. If he knew something about his money why didn’t he say so?

  “Well, the question is, what do you think of Costa?”

  “Costa? Which Costa?” This wasn’t at all what he had been hoping for.

  “Our Costa. Costa the happy boatman. He’s sitting over there with that band of ruffians.”

  George glanced in the direction Peterson indicated. A group of dock workers and fishermen were seated at a table in front of the admiral’s statue, unshaven, barefoot, wearing greasy undershirts and dirty patched pants. In their midst, Costa gleamed, immaculate as always in white shirt and fresh cotton trousers. George caught his eye and they smiled and waved. He turned back to Peterson. “He’s a good man. What about him?”

  “I like him, you understand. I consider him my friend. The trouble is, I’m almost certain he’s stolen a thousand drachmas from me.”

  George’s first reaction was a sort of dull envy. A lousy thousand drachmas. How would Peterson feel if it had been sixty thousand? He looked at the young man’s round cheeks, the wide innocent eyes, the eager almost girlishly vulnerable mouth, and envy turned to resentment. It was always the innocent, wide-eyed, well-meaning ones who caused trouble, with their milk-fed manners and morals, and it was always the local community that paid. “Costa wouldn’t steal,” he said flatly.

  “It looks like an open-and-shut case, George. I had this thousand-drachma note yesterday. I didn’t have anything on—no pockets, you understand. The money had been lying around the kitchen so I stuck it in the table drawer. I don’t usually keep money there. Later Costa dropped by the way he does and I left him in the kitchen to go to the john. When I looked for the money this morning it was gone.”

  “That sounds fairly simple-minded. He’s the only person who’s been in the house?”

  “No. I have these beats staying with me, but you know how they are. They couldn’t be bothered to steal. Too much trouble.”

  “How sober were you? You were running around without any pockets. Did you lure him into bed maybe? I can imagine Costa taking money if he did something he thought he ought to be paid for.”

  Peterson laughed nervously. “Hey, now wait a minute. With all this snatch around, why should I do that?” A blush suffused his cheeks, and his face assumed his earnest student’s look. “You know I don’t go for that sort of thing.”

  “People do all sorts of things here that they don’t usually go in for. I just want to get the whole story.” He glanced back at the table at the foot of the admiral’s statue as their drinks were put on the table. A memory from last night suddenly came to him. Costa had asked him to change a thousand-drachma note. That was why he had pulled out the wad of bills. It hadn’t made sense before. Leighton frowned. If it had been Joe’s money, Costa wouldn’t have advertised the fact that he had it. And Costa wasn’t a pickpocket. “What are you planning to do about it?” he asked abruptly.

  “Well, that’s the problem. I don’t care about the money. Hell, I’d have given it to him if he’d asked me. I just don’t like to be robbed. I guess that sounds pretty bourgeois and materialistic, but I just don’t like it. It undermines my confidence in the guy.”

  “You don’t want to go to the police. They might not be so easily convinced that your beat friends don’t steal.”

  “I hadn’t thought about the police,” Peterson assured him. “The thing is, you have a lot of influence. Well, hell, you have the whole island in your pocket. Couldn’t you talk to Costa and suggest he give it back?”

  “How would you react if somebody walked up to you and asked you to return money you’d stolen?”

  “Well, of course you’d have to handle it tactfully. I know he took it. It couldn’t have been anybody else.”

  “Nonsense.” George was talking to himself more than to Joe. “These people are sharp, they cheat the pants off each other, but they respect their friendships with foreigners. There’s a tradition of hospitality that means something. We’ve never had thieves here. You can leave things around and come back and pick them up a week later.” He sat back and took a swallow of beer. His suspicions had been talked into submission.

  Peterson nodded like a bewildered and unhappy child. “I’m sure you’re right, George, but I want my money back. If I have to, I’ll beat it out of him myself. I just thought you might handle it more diplomatically. Everybody pays attention to what you say around here.”

  “In that case, I have to be careful what I say. Anyway, I can’t get too worked up about your money. I lost almost sixty thousand drachma last night.”

  Joe sat back with mouth agape and then uttered a long whistle. “Jesus. That’s two thousand dollars. Jesus Christ. How?”

  “I had it in my pocket, like a goddamn fool. It’s a nuisance not having a bank here. Costa asked me for change of a thousand drachma in the back room in there. I pulled the whole bloody lot out to give it to him. As far as I know, I shoved it back in my pocket and that’s the last I remember seeing it. When I looked for it this morning, it was gone.”

  Peterson flung himself back in his chair, his big body evoking squeaks of protest from its flimsy frame, and spread out his arms. “Holy mother of God! What more do you want? I told you, it’s an open-and-shut case.”

  “Except that Costa’s not a thief,” George asserted. “Anybody might steal if he’s desperate. But if Costa were in trouble, we’d know about it. He’d try to borrow before he’d steal, the way I’m probably going to have to.”

  “I’ll leave the psychology to you, George. I just want my money back.”

  “I want mine back about sixty times more than you do,” Leighton said irritably. He squinted out toward the sea. It wasn’t its usual tonic blue today, but gray, as still and motionless as cement. The flag out by the cannons at the entrance to the port hung limply from its mast. Down along the broad quai, an orange caique was unloading watermelons as round as cannonballs. Donkeys passed, staggering dazedly under huge loads. It was too hot to worry about money. He would rather forget it than be riddled with suspicions. He couldn’t believe that Costa, or any of the locals, would rob him. He had been here too long, friendships had been sealed by too many small reciprocal acts of kindness and esteem. “I’ll be damned if I know what either of us can do about it,” he said dismissively.

  “Good morning, all.” A voice spoke from behind them and Henry Varnum pulled over a chair and folded his skeletal frame into it. He had a long clown’s face, a long tip-tilted nose with a bulb at the end which looked as if it ought to light up. He put bony elbows on the table and kneaded his eyes with his fists. “Any casualties last night?” he asked in his knotty Australian accent. “No broken bones? You were in a fair way to getting pissed, Georgie boy.”

  “I’m evidently not the only one who isn’t home pecking away at the typewriter,” George remarked with a sharpening of interest. Was this it? Was Henry going to pull the money out of his pocket with a little speech about fiscal responsibility?

  “Shit, eh? I’m in the middle of a blizzard scene. You might be
able to do something with it in this weather, but for us lesser hacks, the imagination balks.”

  “Try an ice pack. Listen, Henry, you were with us last night. Did you notice if I did anything in particular with a fistful of money, like give it to a little blind lady?”

  “You were waving it around at one point. I must’ve been pissed, too. As I remember, it looked like all the money in Greece.”

  “It was a lot. You wouldn’t have any way of knowing whether I had it with me when I left?”

  “That, no. You don’t mean you’ve lost it? Shit, eh? That’s pretty dicey for you, George.”

  “Almost sixty thousand drachmas,” Joe elaborated with awe. “I’ve been robbed too, but only a thousand.”

  “Robbed, eh?” Varnum glanced from one to the other. “Well, for what it’s worth, so’ve we. Jenny was missing her shopping money the other day. It didn’t seem worth making a bother about, but I wonder. One doesn’t think of the people here as thieves.”

  “Do you suspect anybody?” Joe posed the question eagerly.

  “Not enough to really accuse anybody, but strictly between ourselves, I couldn’t bloody well help wondering about Costa. What do you think, George? He’d been at the house the evening before. You know the way he sort of drifts in and out for no particular reason. A regular bloody cat man. I like him, blast him. I bloody well don’t see who else could’ve taken it. We run a dismally orderly house.”

  George glanced at Peterson and saw his look of triumph. He felt himself being pushed closer to something he instinctively resisted. The foreigners hadn’t the right to unload their troubles on locals; the system was rigged too heavily in the foreigners’ favor. “Well, at least you two know you’ve been robbed,” he said. “I wish I did.”

  “All the same, you’ll have to go to the police about a sum like that,” Varnum said as if it were a foregone conclusion.

  “Police? Are you mad?” George dismissed the suggestion. What could the police do, anyway? “You know what I think about the police, especially here. What do we need them for? If we start going to them with our problems, they’ll just use it as a jusification for adding more men to the force. The hell with the police.”

  “Police? Hey, what’s happened? Has somebody been murdered?” Sidney Coleman erupted into the group with explosive energy. George sat up straighter as Sid grabbed a chair. He admired Sid. He was a poet so there was no room for envy of his striking talent. He was prankish and unpredictable, the most likely person to have taken George’s money into protective custody. Joe and Henry Varnum both spoke at once, filling the newcomer in on the putative thefts.

  “Hey this is great, fellows,” Sid exclaimed, without offering George a word of sympathy. His Jewishness was stronger than any mere nationality, although he also happened to be Canadian. A smile of mad infectious glee lighted his bold Semitic features. “This is a mystery. Let’s solve it. Henry, you’ve written mystery stories. How do we go about it?”

  “This one’s too bloody easy. It solves itself.”

  “Why’re you all so sure about Costa? It could’ve been anybody. It could’ve been me, for Chrissakes. No, no. Hey. Hey, listen, men. I know what we ought to do. Hey, listen.” Sid rocked back and forth with suppressed glee and jabbed a finger into the air. “We’ll arrest him. How about that? We’ll arrest him and give him a trial. Island justice. A regular jury trial, with a jury. I’ll handle the defense. One of my uncles is a lawyer. I bet I can get him off. Anybody want to bet? I bet I can get him off. If he’s guilty, he has to give the money back. If he’s innocent, we buy him a drink. Hey, this’ll be great.”

  The group was rapidly augmented by female attachments. Joe’s Lena arrived lugging an overflowing shopping basket. Jenny Varnum followed with a few small bundles. The Varnums had no children. Passers-by, drawn by the animation around the table, hovered briefly and passed on—the English lady who had just married a Greek male prostitute she had picked up in Athens, the gentle young American alcoholic who was watched over and protected by the whole community, both indigenous and foreign, the Italian painter with his Dutch boyfriend.

  Sid and Henry were making everybody laugh a great deal. The air was sibilant with the word “police” as the story was repeated to the new arrivals. George was damned if he was going to the police, not for ten times the sum. Their methods were notorious. He had absolutely no grounds for suspecting anybody. His conviction that Sid might have the money was weakening, but he clung to hope. Perhaps they were all in on it and had invented this game as a form of torture before the happy dénouement. Island fun.

  “Let’s get started,” Sid cried, rocking with glee. “Who’s going to arrest him? I demand that my client be arrested.”

  “I’m afraid if we ask the police to arrest him, they’d keep him,” Varnum objected.

  “The Vigilantes! The Storm Troopers! We’ll knock on his door in the middle of the night!”

  Before they could get launched on this new tack, George leaned across the table and addressed Sid directly above the babble of voices. “Listen, chum. This is all good sport, but I’m pretty worried. Don’t you have an idea what happened to the damn money?”

  “Me? What are you talking about, comrade?”

  “You were there. I thought you might know something about it. I thought you might even have taken it to keep for me.”

  “Crazy, man. Why would I do a thing like that? Do you think I want to give you a heart attack? I’d be dead already if I lost that much money.”

  “I see.” So much for hope, frail at best. If Charlie and Peter had picked it up, it would have been delivered at the door first thing this morning. That was the way they were. Punctilious. There had been nobody else. Give up. He caught Joe’s eye. “I think maybe I’d better have that talk with Costa after all.” At least it would give him the feeling that he’d done everything he could.

  He pushed his chair back and stood up. He was aware of silence falling over the group as he left. He approached Costa from behind under the admiral’s statue and put his hand on his shoulder. Costa looked up and they greeted each other with their eyes.

  “Can I speak to you a minute?” George asked. He nodded to the others at the table.

  “Sure, Yorgo. Sure.” He rose and followed Leighton a few steps into the shade of an awning. He moved with light gliding grace. He had a northern face, Irish or Breton, with fine features, light hair, humor dancing in pale-blue eyes. When he smiled, his face lighted with elfin charm.

  “I need your help,” George began. His heart was playing tricks again under the pressure of his jangled nerves. It was crucially important that he choose the right words if he was to accomplish anything. He was watching Costa closely, trying not to appear to be doing so. “There’ve been a couple of robberies in the last few days. People are beginning to want to do something about it.”

  Costa rotated his hand in front of him in a Greek gesture of chastisement. “What do you expect, Yorgo? The kind of people coming here these days.” His English was good, picked up on the docks like everything else he knew.

  “Yes, I know, but the way things stand, it looks as if it’s someone we know, someone who knows our houses. All the money I had last night is gone.”

  A look of genuine concern crossed Costa’s face and he made a hissing sound between his teeth. “But it was very much. This is bad, Yorgo. You had it with you when you left Stavro’s. I saw it. Surely it is at home somewhere.”

  “You saw it? How do you mean?”

  “It made a lump—how do you say?—in your pocket.”

  “Oh?” Leighton turned this information over in his mind for an instant. His trousers fitted loosely, the pockets were roomy. He could test the story by experimenting with a wad of paper. “Well, that proves what I’m saying. A total stranger couldn’t have found his way around in the house at night without waking somebody up. I thought maybe I’d dropped it after I changed your thousand drachmas.”

  “No, I saw it when you left,” Costa repeated.
The humor had gone out of his eyes. They were intent and watchful, but friendly.

  “All I want is my money back. The same for the others. I thought maybe you could spread the word that if the money’s returned, nothing more will be said about it.”

  “How can anybody return the money without making himself to be the thief?”

  “I’ve thought of that. Would you be willing to act as go-between? That is, let people know that you’ll return the money, with no questions asked?”

  “And make myself to be the thief? No, Yorgo. I cannot do that.”

  “This is serious, Costaiki mou. If somebody goes to the police and your name is mentioned you’d be in trouble.”

  “The police!” He cursed the police with his hand, palm out, fingers extended, pushing at air. “What can the police do for you? And why will my name be mentioned?”

  “I don’t like to say this, but it already has. Two of the foreigners think it might’ve been you. I’ve told them it’s impossible.”

  “Who says this?” Costa demanded indignantly.

  “I can’t say. The point is, they like you. They don’t want to cause trouble.”

  “Ah, the foreigners.” He spat the word out. “They are my friends and then if you lose some money, I am getting the blame. I have nothing more to do with the foreigners.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Costa. I was just trying to warn you for your own sake.”

  “No worry. Costa can take care of himself.” He said it with a swagger, but George could feel him turning dangerous. “The foreigner comes and all he bring is trouble. The drink. The dope. The stealing. All from when the foreigner comes. I warn. I warn before. The police maybe arrest that bar boy, Dimitri, Jeff’s friend. You better look if Jeff has nothing in the house is bad for him.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?” George demanded, unprepared for what seemed a new unrelated element in the conversation.