Big Kiss-Off (6 page)

The air in the small room was suddenly hot and very humid. It was difficult for Cade to breathe.

Miss Spence continued, primly. “Of course, I have no proof, but there was talk, a lot of talk. In this instance, I believe, with good foundation.” Miss Spence delicately refrained from befouling his name. “Because this young woman of whom we are speaking not only bestowed her favors on Tocko, she was, according to what the help tell me, equally generous with James Moran. Tocko and Moran quarreled over her publicly. She was the cause of the breach in their business relations. More, when Mr. Moran left Bay Parish, your former wife left with him and the only forwarding address I have for her is the same hotel in New Orleans at which Mr. Moran is now stopping.”

Cade felt a hundred years old. It wasn’t either right or fair that one sex machine could do the things to a man that Janice had done to him. He got heavily to his feet. “Well, thanks. Thanks a lot.”

The postmistress regarded him with troubled eyes as he opened the door. “I thought you ought to know. Now I’m not so certain I did right in telling you.”

Cade repeated, “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Miss Spence.”

Mimi was still waiting in front of the post office. Her lower Hp was thrust out in a pout. The cream-colored rounds of her breasts pushed the thin fabric of his shirt into visible peaks. Even looking at the girl excited him. He regretted he’d attempted to be a gentleman, regretted he hadn’t taken her the night before, by force, if necessary. For all her pretended modesty, Mimi had probably expected him to do just that. Women loved stinkers. Both fiction and life were filled with concrete examples. The bigger a louse a man was, the more most women liked him.

Still, a man was what he was.

Cade started to cross the walk and stopped as a hand touched his shoulder from behind. His muddled eyes hopeful, his thin voice filled with sensuous anticipation, his too small head bobbing like a nodding Buddha as he talked, the Squid was smiling down at him.

“You ain’t gonna leave like Joe tol’ you, are you, Cade? You’re still gonna be on your boat by noon.” The Squid’s fingers caressed Cade’s shoulder. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

Cade started as violently as if a snake had touched him. He shook off the Squid and, with skin goose-pimpled and flesh crawling, continued on his way.

The heat increased as the morning sun rose higher in the sky. Small isolated toadstools of steamy vapor hovered over the muddy pools that had formed in the low spots in the street during the night. As Cade reached the curb, Mimi laid her hand on his arm and stood looking up at him.

“How you say
dificil
in English?” she asked.

“You mean difficult?”

“Sí.”
Her big eyes searched his face. “It is
difficil
for me to beg, but — ”

“But what?”

Small fingers bit into Cade’s forearm. “If you would be so kind as to take me to New Orleans, I will be ver’ grateful. Besides, you will be well paid.”

“By whom?” Cade asked, coldly.

“By Jeem. My ‘usban’ will pay you.”

Cade wished Mimi would take her hand off his arm. “Why ask me?”

“Because I am stranger here. Because you are only man I know. Because you have already been so kind.”

The memory of his talk with Miss Spence still rankling, Cade was short with her. “You mean such a sucker.”

Mimi shook her head. “Thees word I do not know.”

Cade’s irritation increased. “Let it go. It doesn’t matter.” He considered telling Mimi about the other Mrs. Morans and didn’t have the heart to do so. Mimi was a good kid. It wasn’t her fault that a heel like Moran had played fast with her. It could be Miss Spence was wrong. Besides, in the spot he was in, a hysterical woman was all he needed to complete the distorted nightmare through which he had been moving since his return to Bay Parish.

Mimi’s fingers bit deeper into his forearm. “Please.”

Conscious that the passersby on the sidewalk were watching them, Cade palmed a cigarette into his mouth with his free hand. “How do you know, after he hasn’t even written to you for a year, that Moran wants to see you?”

Mimi was truthful. “I don’t.”

“How do you know he’d even pay for the gas it would take me to run you up to New Orleans?”

Unshed tears formed in the corners of Mimi’s eyes. “I don’t know that, either.”

Cade lit the cigarette in his mouth. “Look, kid. I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. The best thing you can do is look up an immigration man, tell him you entered the country illegally and ask him to contact your consul. Then the worst thing that can happen to you is to be sent back to Caracas.”

Mimi’s under lip thrust out in a pout. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to go back to Caracas. I want to go to New Orleans. Besides, I told you last night. My family would not receive me.”

The heat and the scenes with Tocko and Miss Spence had made Cade’s head ache. He was sorry for Mimi. They had a bond in common. She was in love with a heel. He was married, or had been married, to a tramp. But running Mimi up river to New Orleans was out of the question. He had the showdown with Laval to face. Then there was the matter of gas. Cade fingered the lone five-dollar bill in his pocket. He might raise New Orleans with what gas still remained in the tanks but he’d never get back down river again.

“I’ve done all I can. You’ll just have to shift for yourself from here on.”

“There is a road to New Orleans?”

“Of a sort, but I wouldn’t advise you to hike it.”

“You mean walk?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

“It leads through some pretty rough country. Besides, you’re too pretty a girl to start out through the swamps alone, especially in that outfit.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Mimi lowered her eyes and a few tears zigzagged down her cheeks. She brushed at them angrily. “Then why don’t you take me to New Orleans?”

Her breasts rose and fell with her emotion until the firm young flesh straining against the fabric threatened to pop the none too securely fastened buttons of her borrowed shirt. “I’ve told you,” Cade said. “Besides, believe it or not, I’m only human and male. I doubt if you’d be any safer with me than you would be on the road.” He shook his head. “No. The best thing you can do is to contact Immigration and have them contact your consul.”

Cade turned abruptly and walked up the street. He’d never felt so like a heel. Still, he had his own problems. He’d had nothing to do with Mimi stowing away in Caracas. She’d known the chances she was taking when she’d crawled under the tarp of the lifeboat on the freighter that had anchored at Pilottown the night before. He’d given her good advice. The best thing she could do was to contact the Venezuelan consul.

As an afterthought, he turned back and gave her the bill in his pocket.

Mimi eyed the bill suspiciously. “For why?”

“Because I think you’re a nice kid. Because I’m sorry for you.”

Mimi put the bill between her breasts. “Thank you.”

This time she turned away and stood looking out over the river. Cade shrugged and walked up the street to the courthouse. The building was ancient, built of stuccoed white stone; its high-ceilinged corridors and rooms giving an illusion of coolness.

The girl back of the parish recorder’s rail was new to Cade, undoubtedly one of the children who’d grown up in the twelve years he’d been away. He told her what he wanted to know and the girl located the information in the files lining one wall. Tocko had given him the truth. The sale of the house and the acreage on Barataria Bay had been duly recorded in a transfer of deed from Mrs. Cade Cain to Tocko Kalavitch. Cade asked the girl behind the desk for a piece of paper and on it wrote the dates of record, to check them against the date on the final divorce papers that had been waiting for him in Tokyo. If Janice had sold the properties before the decree became final, both sales were perfectly legal. There was nothing he could do to recover his property. If, however, she had made the sale after the decree had become final, he at least had a talking point in court. He knew nothing of the law but it seemed reasonable to assume that a divorce would invalidate a power of attorney.

Cade folded the paper on which he had written the dates and put it in his shirt pocket. He didn’t care about the acreage on Barataria Bay. It was too isolated to be of any value. The land had stood untouched and unused since his great grandfather had purchased it for some purpose lost in time. The house was another matter. The house had a sentimental as well as a cash value. He’d been born in the old house. He’d meant to raise his children in it.

The gun sagging in his hip pocket had rubbed the flesh of his thin buttock raw. Perspiration made the abrasion smart. He stood a moment on the courthouse steps wondering what to do. Well, all he could do was to go back to the
Sea Bird
and wait. It was only ten o’clock. His noon deadline was still two hours away.

He walked back toward the levee down one of the chinaberry-tree shaded streets that led through the colored section of Bay Parish. It wasn’t any different from Main Street. The smiling faces were merely darker, the greetings more enthusiastic and punctuated now and then with praise to the Lord for his safe arrival home.

Cade knew fierce resentment. This was his town. He liked Bay Parish. Bay Parish liked him. If it hadn’t been for Janice, Tocko and Laval, it could have been a wonderful homecoming. He turned to answer a question one of the admiring folks asked him — and saw Mimi. Pouting again, she was trailing along behind him, the black Delta mud squishing between the exquisitely formed toes of her bare feet. Even her dirty bare feet were pretty.

Cade waited for her to catch up. “Now what? Why are you following me?”

Mimi’s small chin jutted, then began to quiver. “Because I don’t know what else to do. I won’t go back to Caracas. I won’t.”

Cade tried to think of something to say. He couldn’t. There didn’t seem to be anything for him to say. As long as the girl was so determined to have her heart broken properly, perhaps he could borrow the money from someone to buy her a dress and some shoes and pay her fare by boat, bus or plane to New Orleans.

He turned and walked on toward the levee with Mimi walking beside him.

Her voice small, she said, “I am a lot of trouble to you, am I not?”

“Yes,” Cade said.

Her voice continued small. “I’m sorry. It is jus’ you have been so ver’ kind, that there is no one else I can trust.”

Cade was annoyed. “Well, stop bawling about it.”

Mimi wiped at her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. “I am not bawling. I am jus’ crying a leetle.”

Cade wished her voice, the sight of her small rounded body, didn’t do the things to him that they did. How much was a man supposed to be able to take? He asked, crossly, “You’re still determined to locate Moran?”

Mimi looked at him from the corners of her eyes without turning her face. “That is why I come to thees country.”

“You won’t go home?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I told you. My family is — ”

“Yes. I know,” Cade interrupted her. He finished the sentence for Mimi. “Your family is ver’ old and ver’ proud. And they were ver’
irritado
when you married Moran. How long had you known the man?”

“A week.”

“And you were together a week?”

“Yes.”

“Living as man and wife?”

“Yes.”

“You had a child by him? There’s a baby back in Caracas?”

Color crept into Mimi’s cheeks. “No.”

“Then, after spending a week with you he left you flat and you haven’t heard from him since?”

“No.”

“But you’re still in love with the guy?”

Mimi watched the mud squish through her toes as she walked. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know. I get all excited inside when I think of how it was to be married. But I am not, how you say, experienced. I am ver’ strictly raised from a ver’ small girl and Jeem was the first man I was evair with, alone.” Mimi glanced sideways at Cade. “Until I met you.”

The bastard
, thought Cade.
The big Irish bastard
. Pushing Mimi over must have been as difficult as waiting for a ripe papaya to drop.

The grass-grown bank of the levee was steep and slippery. He helped Mimi up the slope, her flesh soft and warm under his fingers. He liked this girl. He’d never liked anyone so much on so short an acquaintance. She was in a bad spot but she was being a lady about it. There was nothing cheap about Mimi. One thing was certain. Easy to push or not, Cade was willing to bet the
Sea Bird
that Moran hadn’t gotten what he wanted until he’d gone through a ceremony of some kind. It could be they were legally married. And now Moran had Janice.

When they reached the broad top of the levee, Mimi asked, “What are you going to do with me?”

“I don’t know,” Cade admitted. He walked down the levee toward the
Sea Bird
with Mimi hurrying beside him, taking three steps to his one. “I do know I’m not going to take you to New Orleans, but it may be I can borrow enough to outfit you and pay your fare.”

“Outfit?”

“Buy you a dress and some shoes.”

“Borrow?”

Cade combed through his meager Spanish. “
Prestado
. What you do when you haven’t any money.”

They were on the pier now. Mimi took the five-dollar bill from its hiding place between her breasts. Her body had perfumed it. “This is all the money you have?”

“That’s right.”

Her voice was as soft and small and as warm as her lovely body. “And you gave it to me.”

Cade was curt with her. “So what?”

Her small fingers bit into his arm. “You are officer. You are gentleman. You are nice.”

Cade was embarrassed. “Stow it. Sweet talk isn’t going to get you anywhere.” He jumped into the cockpit of the
Sea Bird
and helped Mimi down. “Right now, let’s have a cup of coffee. I’ll make it this time. But get one thing straight in that pretty little head of yours.”

“Sí?”