Like a Hole in the Head

by James Hadley Chase

  Hidden behind the sun goggles, he faced me.

  “You could say that, Mr. Benson,” he said huskily.

  “Give me the clip.”

  He took the clip of cartridges from his hip pocket and dropped it into my outstretched hand.

  I looked at the bay. The skiers were out of sight, but I could still hear the drone of the motor-boat.

  “Go down and talk yourself out of it,” I said. “You’re supposed to be a good talker. You’d better be convincing if Lucy means anything to you.”

  He turned away and went down the ladder into the house.

  In a few moments there came an explosion of talk in Spanish. I could hear Savanto’s voice, quivering with rage. I had never heard him talk this way and although I didn’t understand what he was saying the sound of the rage in his voice chilled me.

  Every now and then I heard Timoteo say something. His voice was low-pitched and controlled among the other shouting voices. This went on for some time, then I heard car doors slam and cars start up.

  There was a further long wait, then Raimundo came up the ladder. He paused when he saw me sitting on the parapet and he beckoned.

  “Mr. Savanto wants you.”

  I followed him down the ladder and out on to the verandah.

  Savanto was sitting in a chair. Carlo was standing at the end of the verandah. He grinned idiotically at me. I went straight to Savanto. I took the clip of cartridges from my pocket and dropped it on the table in front of him.

  “Your gutless son unloaded the gun while I was in the tree,” I said. “It was a certain shot. He would be dead by now if your gutless son hadn’t deliberately fouled up the operation.”

  Savanto stared stonily at me.

  “You should have checked the gun.”

  “You think so? I had checked the gun. It was ready to shoot. Do you think I should have thought your son would have unloaded the gun? Would you have imagined he would unload the gun? Are you all that smart? The gun was ready to shoot. If you want to kick someone, kick your goddam son, not me!”

  Savanto nodded.

  “I have spoken to him. At least, he was convincing. Lopez believes the shot was impossible. From where we were watching, it looked that way. So we do it tomorrow.”

  “This is tough enough without having to cope with your son.”

  “You will have no further problems with him,” Savanto said. “Just be certain, Mr. Benson, I have no problems with you.”

  He turned to Carlo and held out his fat hand. Grinning, Carlo took from his hip pocket a flat packet carefully done up in tissue paper.

  Savanto took it and laid it on the table.

  “Here is something, Mr. Benson, to help you to be successful tomorrow. It could be something not so easily replaced next time. Please remember that.”

  He got to his feet and followed by Carlo, he went down to the Cadillac.

  I hesitated for a long moment before I went to the table. The Cadillac drove away as Raimondo came up to me.

  “Leave it, soldier,” he said quietly. “It’s her hair. He had it cut off, but she’s all right, soldier. He just wants you to know he means business.”

  I stared at him.

  “Her hair?”

  He turned away.

  “It’ll grow again.”

  With shaking hands I opened the packet. The sight of Lucy’s golden tresses, tied neatly into a switch with black ribbon, made my heart lurch.

  “When did this happen?” I said, scarcely recognising my voice.

  “This morning.”

  I sat down. I had to. Suddenly there was no strength in my legs. I touched the hair, feeling its softness.

  “This morning? When you went for the whisky?”

  “No… after. I told you she was all right. It was after.”

  “Does Timoteo know about this?”

  “Not then. Now he’s back, he’ll know.”

  I folded the tissue paper around the switch. I couldn’t bear to look at it any more.

  “I’m sorry, soldier,” Raimondo said quietly.

  I turned in the chair. He was standing with his back against one of the verandah’s uprights. His dark, sweating face looked troubled. His eyes shifted as they met mine.

  “Do you go along with this?” I asked. “Do you okay this…?” I put my hands on the tissue paper. “And this?” I let my shirt fall open so that he could see the Red Dragon brand. “Do you think a man who can do things like this could be the saviour of peasants?”

  He lifted his shoulders.

  “He gets things done, soldier. This is what counts. To get things done, he acts mean from time to time.” He wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. “He has done a lot of good. Ten years ago, his people had to haul water in cans two miles to their homes. He said he would fix that. They didn’t believe him. He found out a politician was having it off with his own daughter. Don’t ask me how he found out… that’s his gift… to find out the weakness of men. He talked to this politician. You can call it blackmail if you want to, but water pipes were laid on. Not so long ago all the stuff our people grew had to be taken into town by mules. I used to drive some of the mules. Savanto decided we should have trucks. There was another politician.” He shrugged. “Savanto found out something about him. They talked and ten trucks appeared. This is the way he works.” He spread his hands helplessly. “If he wants something for his people, he gets it and he doesn’t give a goddam how he gets it.”

  “Do these peasants know the kind of man he is?”

  “Some of them guess; some of them could know; most of them are too grateful to ask questions.”

  “And you?” I stared at him.

  Raimundo pushed himself away from the verandah support. “I’m taking a swim. Do you want to come with me?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’ll work out, soldier. Up to now, he has always kept his word.”

  “Up to now.”

  He went down the steps, across the sand dunes and towards the sea.

  I put my hand on the packet of tissue paper, then I unwrapped it and released the soft tresses.

  Stroking the long, blonde hair brought me very close to Lucy.

  The idea of how to solve this nightmare came to me. It suddenly dropped into my mind and I wondered why I had been so dumb not to have thought of it before.

  I looked down at the blonde tresses on the table, then at the Red Dragon brand on my chest.

  Savanto had said to me: How many men have you killed in coldblood? Eighty-two? What is one more life to you?

  I would probably have to kill Diaz.

  Life eighty-three.

  I knew for certain now that I would kill Augusto Savanto. Life eightyfour.

  But that would be a pleasure.

  * * *

  I was still sitting on the verandah when Raimundo came back from his swim.

  During the half hour I had been alone, my mind had been active.

  Raimundo looked uneasily at me as he came up the steps. His eyes strayed to the switch of hair lying on the table.

  “Why don’t you take a swim?” he said, pausing at the head of the steps. “It’s good in there.”

  I shook my head, keeping my expression deadpan. I didn’t want him to suspect what was going on in my mind.

  “It’s too hot right now. Maybe later,” I said.

  He nodded and went into the house to change out of his trunks.

  I again touched Lucy’s hair, then wrapped the switch in the tissue paper and put it in my hip pocket.

  Then somewhere in the house I heard the telephone bell start up. I heard Raimundo thumping down the stairs to answer it.

  I switched my mind back to Augusto Savanto. I wondered how long he would stay at the Imperial Hotel. He would probably leave after Diaz was dead. I pictured him sitting on the balcony on the fourteenth floor of the hotel which faced the sea. At the end of the boulevard was a twentystorey block of apartments still under construction. The syndicate building it h
ad run out of money, and for the time being construction had stopped although it was nearly finished. Lucy and I, spending a day in Paradise City, had visited the building. We had nothing better to do and a sign over the entrance invited inspection. We had been pop-eyed at the rentals they were asking. The penthouse apartment on the 20th floor had been luxuriously furnished and just for the hell of it, we had taken the elevator up on the long ride to look at it. The agent, showing us round, had spotted we had no money, but as he had nothing better to do he had gone along with us. Standing on the terrace of the penthouse, I remembered, I had had a clear view of the Imperial Hotel.

  If I could get up there with the Weston & Lees, I would have no problem in putting a bullet in the middle of Savanto’s evil head. This is what I wanted to do and was now determined to do.

  My thoughts were interrupted as Raimundo came flying out on to the verandah.

  I have become used to seeing frightened faces. When you go into battle the times I have you are often surrounded by faces that telegraph fear. I immediately recognised the signs.

  “Timoteo and your wife have bolted!” His voice was unnaturally loud. “We’ve got to find them !”

  For a brief moment I couldn’t believe what he was saying, then I jumped to my feet, kicking away my chair.

  “Bolted? Where? What the hell are you saying?”

  He gulped, then steadied himself.

  “Nick just phoned. Timoteo and your wife took off for the Cypress swamp! You’ve got to help me find them !”

  He charged down the steps, bawling for Carlo as he pounded across the sand to the Volkswagen.

  Carlo appeared around the back of the house, running flat footed, his brutish face bewildered.

  Raimundo came to a skidding stop by the car and looked back at me.

  “Come on !” he yelled. “Come on !”

  By the time I reached the car, Carlo was in the back seat and Raimundo had the car on the move. As I slammed the door shut, he took off, skidding over the sand, then he raced the car down the narrow road so we heaved and banged over the bumps while he wrestled with the wheel.

  We finally reached the highway. None of us could speak while we had rushed down the sandy lane. It was as much as we could do to hold ourselves in our seats.

  As the smooth tarmac of the highway slid under the wheels, I said, “How did they get away?”

  “Timoteo went berserk when he saw your wife had lost her hair,” Raimundo said savagely. flattened Nick. He tried to get her to the highway but the other guards headed him off.

  They bolted into the Cypress swamp. The guards followed them as far as it was safe, then they turned back, but they have them bottled up. We have to go in there and get them out.”

  As a back-drop to the swank villas along the beach, the Cypress swamp was a twenty-thousand acre jungle, waiting to be reclaimed. When I had first come to Paradise City, I had optimistically gone into the swamp after wild duck. I had found it a jungle of cypress trees and red, white and black mangroves, their roots like elephant tusks. Grey Spanish moss, duckweed and bladderwort, festooning the trees, offered hiding places for snakes, giant spiders and scorpions. The swamp was interlaced with narrow canals of stagnant water covered with white lilies and a breeding place for mosquitoes. Step wrong and you could sink to your death in evil-smelling slime. It was a hell of a place to get lost in.

  Nick Lewis had a flat-bottomed boat which he had turned over to me. I had used it once to navigate the canals, but after being practically eaten alive by mosquitoes, and seeing a crocodile that, luckily for me, was too lazy and well fed to charge the boat, I had quit. I had laid up the boat and given up the idea of shooting wild duck.

  The thought of Lucy being in this hell hole with a numbskull like Timoteo sent a rush of blood to my head.

  “We’ve got to find them !” Raimundo was shouting. “If Savanto hears of this, none of us will live !”

  “That’s fine… the saviour of peasants,” I said. “Are you putting me on or do you mean it?”

  “I mean it !”

  His set face and the panic in his eyes told me he did mean it.

  It took us less than a quarter of an hour to reach the villa I had seen from Nancy’s boat. We tore down the dirt road and came to a tyre screaming stop at the front entrance.

  Nick, in his yellow-and-red Hawaiian shirt, was waiting for us. The side of his jaw was swollen and he looked like a man facing sudden death. He burst into a stream of frantic Spanish as Raimundo tumbled out of the car. I got out and Carlo followed me, his brutish face glistening with sweat. As I couldn’t understand what Nick was bawling about, I moved away and stood waiting in the shade.

  Raimundo cut Nick short and came over to me.

  “Have you ever been in the swamp, soldier?” he asked.

  “No.”

  It was a lie I felt sure would pay off.

  “They’re in there and they can’t get out. Three of our boys are guarding the exits. We’ll join up with them and flush them out.”

  It took us some ten minutes, walking fast in the broiling sun to reach the edge of the swamp. There was a narrow path that led into the swamp, and here we found the man in the white ducks, waiting. After talking to him in Spanish, Raimundo told me it was along this path that Timoteo and Lucy had entered the swamp.

  “This is your kind of territory, soldier,” he went on. “You lead the way in.”

  I knew what was ahead. The path went into the swamp for something like a quarter of a mile, then it petered out. From then on it was bog, jungle, canals and mosquitoes.

  I started down the path with Raimundo close on my heels. Behind him came Nick, Carlo and the man in the white ducks. It was steamy hot in there and the smell of decay, stagnant water and rotting vegetation increased as we penetrated further into the jungle.

  I had spent three years in similar jungles. My eyes were trained to see things which the men following me were blind to. A broken branch, a smudge on the mud-packed path, disturbed leaves told me this was the way they had come.

  Finally, we reached the end of the path. We stood in a group, looking at the dense jungle ahead of us, divided by a ten-foot-wide canal with its beautiful floating lilies.

  “We’ll split up here,” I said. Two men to the left : two to the right. I’ll go straight ahead.”

  Raimundo shook his head.

  “I’m staying with you, soldier. You’re not going it alone.”

  I hadn’t expected it would be that easy.

  “Okay. Get these guys going.”

  He sent Carlo and the man in the white ducks to the far side of the canal and Nick on his own to the right.

  When we were alone, Raimundo turned to face me.

  “Don’t try any tricks, soldier,” he said. We have got to find them and bring them back. Listen to me! Savanto has an organisation of killers ! They can reach you and your wife wherever you try to hide. I’m warning you! No one has ever double- crossed him and survived. If we don’t bring them back, you and I are dead men.”

  “So let’s go and find them,” I said.

  Not if Savanto has a hole in his head. I thought.

  I moved into the jungle. Some five hundred yards ahead of me was Nick Lewis’s old boat, completely hidden by the dense undergrowth. Three months ago I had dragged it out of the canal on to the bank. There was no reason why it shouldn’t be there still. I was sure my only chance of finding Lucy was to use the boat. They couldn’t have got far into the swamp and they were probably hiding somewhere along the canal. But Raimundo was in my way. I knew he was alert. I had to put him out of action before I reached the boat.

  Ahead of us I saw a dense obstruction of mangrove roots. I stopped. Mosquitoes hummed around my head as I turned. Faintly, I could hear the other men crashing their way through the jungle. I couldn’t see them and that meant they couldn’t see us.

  “They can’t have come this way,” I said. “They wouldn’t get through here. We’d better go back.”

  Raimundo s
lashed at the mosquitoes that were tormenting him.

  “Anything you say…”

  I braced myself, shifting my feet so that I was on perfect balance.

  “Watch it!” The snap in my voice startled him. “Snake!” and I pointed at his feet.

  As his eyes shifted away from me, I slammed a punch at his jaw. I should have remembered how fast he was. Even though I had him fooled for a split second, he was fast enough to shift his head a fraction. It was enough. My fist scraped along his face, throwing him off balance, but it wasn’t the killer punch I had intended. I hit him with my left as he struggled to stay upright and he went down. But he was very much alive… too alive. His legs gripped mine and I came down on top of him. My hands went to his throat. It was like holding on to a savage trapped animal. His fist smashed into my mouth. The power behind the punch threw me off him. He was struggling up on to his knees as I kicked out at him: my foot slammed into his chest, throwing him down again. I pounced on him, my hands seeking his throat. Again his fist banged into my face, but this time I held on. I felt the muscles in my shoulders and arms turn into knots as I exerted all my strength into my fingers. His legs began to thrash. He tried to reach my face with hooked fingers, but his strength was leaving him. Savagely, I increased my grip. He stared up at me, his eyes sightless, then his legs stopped moving, his mouth opened and his tongue came out and blood started to run from his nostrils.

  As he went limp, I released my grip and got away from him. I could see the imprint of my fingers on his throat. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive, and I didn’t care. I had had enough of Savanto and his thugs. They had come into my life and had disrupted it, now I was at last hitting back.

  My nose was bleeding slightly and my lips were swelling. Mosquitoes plagued me. I didn’t give a goddam. Somewhere in this stinking jungle I was going to find Lucy. That’s all I had on my mind.

  Leaving Raimundo lying on the hard-packed mud, I started off to find the boat. I found it where I had left it, high and dry on the bank. As I heaved it down to the water a spider as big as my fist scuttled out of it: an obscene thing with short legs as thick as my finger, covered with black hair.