Big Kiss-Off (9 page)

“I see,” Cade said.

The waitress picked up the bills on the table. “My money?”

“Your money.”

“You’re satisfied with what I could tell you?”

“I’m satisfied.”

Mimi wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Would you tell me just one thing more? How did they act? I mean with each other. Would you say they were sweethearts?”

The waitress put the two bills in the pocket of her nylon uniform. “That’s a hard thing to say, honey. They were very friendly. She occasionally called him ‘dahling — ’ He called her ‘dear.’ But she also called most of the pollys ‘dahling.’ And from the amount of figuring and scribbling she and Moran did on the backs of menus and on the tablecloths, I got the distinct impression that if they were depressing the coils of an innerspring together, it was strictly a secondary matter. You know, more like they were business partners.”

“What kind of business?” Cade asked.

The waitress shrugged. “There you have me, mister. But again I had the distinct impression it had something to do with the land on Barataria Bay.”

Cade laid a bill on the tray to cover the check and a tip, then stood up and reached for his cap.

Mimi stood up with him.

“Back to the boat,” Cade told her.

There were stars but no moon. It had been twelve years since Cade had been on the river at night. Some of the landmarks had changed. It was difficult running without lights. It was also dangerous. Once he almost rammed into a floating tree being carried out into the Gulf by the current. Once a freighter, veering from its course, for some reason known only to the man at the wheel, nearly ran them down.

After passing the cluster of lights on the west bank, which he hoped was Venice, Cade throttled the motors down until he barely had seaway and debated his best move.

He could head directly for his destination by running the little-used pass originating just south of Venice and terminating in West Bay. It would save him miles and gasoline. He could stop off in Bay Parish and attempt to refuel for the long run to Grand Isle. He might also be able to ascertain just where he stood with the law, learn what moves Tocko had made regarding Joe Laval’s disappearance and his own hasty departure with Mimi aboard the
Sea Bird
.

Cade glanced through the dark at the small oval face of the girl standing beside his elbow. To save her new dress and shoes and hose, Mimi had changed back into her borrowed white pants and shirt. The black-haired girl wore well. The more intimately Cade knew her, the better he liked her. There was no pretense about her. Mimi was for you or against you. She had been bitterly disappointed at failing to find Moran in New Orleans, but had refused to cry. She hadn’t called out once or shown any outward signs of fright on the precarious trip down river. Nor had she asked any foolish questions. When he had told her he intended to head for Barataria Bay and a showdown with Janice and Moran, she had accepted his judgment without question. In the country she came from the men made the decisions. Such pants as the women wore were merely for ornamental purposes.

He said, “I’m trying to make up my mind whether I ought to stop in Bay Parish and replace what fuel we’ve used.”

“We do not ’ave enough to get to this Barataria?”

“Plenty. If we don’t run into a blow.”

“A blow?”

“A storm.”

“There is apt to be a storm?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Cade said wryly. “This is the season for them but it’s a little too dark to see if the small craft warnings are flying and under the circumstances I don’t think it would be smart to check with the Coast Guard.”

Mimi proved she was only human by asking her first foolish question. “Why not?”

“For two reasons,” Cade told her. “One, you’re in the country illegally. Remember? Two, there is the little matter of the man I dropped into the river. For all I know, I may be wanted for murder.”

Cade decided to stop at Bay Parish and eased his throttle forward. He’d been right about the lights. They indicated Venice on the west bank. He could see the lights of Bay Parish now. Cade felt his way inshore as far as he dared and dropped anchor. The cruiser immediately swung around and held, nosed into the current, rising and falling with a gentle motion.

“I’ll swim in from here,” he told Mimi. “You won’t be afraid to stay on the cruiser alone?”

Mimi bobbed her head. “Yes. I ’ave been ver’ afraid all the way down from New Orleans. But that does not make any difference. You are
captain
. I will stay where you tell me to stay.”

Cade patted her and wished he hadn’t. Her flesh attracted his hand like a magnet. It was still a long way, a hell of a long way, to Barataria Bay. He hoped he could control himself. Only time would tell. He wrapped his gun in oiled silk and put it in his side pants pocket.

“I shouldn’t be too long. I’ll be back as soon as I find out where we stand and make arrangements to refuel.”

The water looked dark and oily and somehow sinister. He knew how Mimi must have felt when she had swum ashore. And she had swum ashore from mid-stream. It would be nice to be loved by a girl like Mimi. As an afterthought, Cade handed her a flashlight. “If I can’t locate the cruiser and have to hail, flash this down on the water, shore side, but only flash it once.”

“Whatever you say,” Mimi said. She raised on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly, without passion. “For good luck.”

Cade held her tighter and longer than necessary. It was exquisite torture. This, too, was a part of his dream, except that in his dreams the girl had been Janice and his need had been satisfied. Mimi freed herself from his arms gently.

“I should not ’ave done that.”

Cade stood, fighting himself. He wasn’t afraid of her knife. He could have the knife in the river and Mimi on her back before she could say Caracas. He could take Mimi on one of the bunks, on the deck plates of the cook-pit, up against the rail. Anywhere with Mimi would give him the relief he needed. Still, it would be a breach of faith, as well as a breach of the flesh. Mimi trusted him. She liked him. He was
capitan
. It was the old army game all over. If rank had its privileges, it also had its responsibilities. There were certain things an officer and a gentleman didn’t do. As long as the black-haired girl even thought she was married to Moran, it would be a hasty, meaningless meeting of two bodies. It wouldn’t be the dream he’d dreamed. If flesh were all he wanted he could have stopped at any number of places in New Orleans and spent five or ten of the thousand dollars for which he had mortgaged his cruiser.

“I’m sorry. So sorry,” Mimi said.

Cade stood up on the wide transom of the boat and split the water in a clean dive that carried him three-fourths of the way to shore. The cold water felt good on his body, but even this close in, the current was strong. Cade swam the few remaining feet in a powerful crawl, then, fighting his way through the inevitable tangle of hyacinth, he climbed up the side of the levee and stood panting for breath. The cruiser was lost in the darkness of the river but from where he stood he could see the business district of Bay Parish and Sal’s new red neon sign. Carried faintly by the off-shore wind, the strains of the Harry Belafonte recording of
Mathilda, Mathilda
came to his ears.

Cade marked the spot where he’d come ashore. Then unwrapping his pistol, he walked toward the red sign and the juke box music. Sal could tell him where he stood with the law.

Except for the lights in the houses, the back streets of Bay Parish were as dark as the river had been. Now and then he passed or was passed by a colored man or woman. Cade walked without any attempt at concealment. His long years as a pilot, of seeing men die beside him, of kissing death daily without the union being consummated, had given him an unshakable belief in preordination. When the time came you got it. Until then, the wheel could spin like mad without anything worse than a two-timing wife and a dame you wished you could stay with, and couldn’t, happening to you.

Sal’s combination bar and restaurant was an isolated building with two vacant lots on one side and a sour orange grove on the other. Cade looked in one of the open windows. The familiars were bellied up to the bar. Tocko was sitting in a booth with the Squid and a bronze-faced young man in his early thirties. The heavy-set Slavonian was pounding lightly on the table with one fist but only the Squid seemed impressed. Cade decided the strange one could be either a flyer or a seaman with his master’s papers. He had that look in his eyes.

Cade walked around the building to the back door. The door was open to catch what breeze there was. Through the screen he could see Mamma Salvatore busy at her stove, pausing from time to time to refresh herself from a big glass of iced orange wine.

Cade tapped on the wood of the screen softly. “Mamma. Mamma Salvatore,” he whispered.

The big woman picked up her glass of wine and waddled casually toward the screen as if to get a breath of fresh air. Between sips of wine, she said softly, “Don’t come in and don’t talk too loud.”

“Why not?”

“Tocko and the Squid are in the bar.”

“I know. I saw them.”

“And you are in bad trouble.”

“How bad?”

“The beeg trouble. The law is looking for you. Tocko has sworn out a warrant charging you weeth keeling that dog Joe Laval.”

Cade started to open his mouth and closed it for fear one of the butterflies fluttering in his stomach would fly out. When he could, he asked, “How does Tocko know Joe is dead?”

“A shark fisherman snagged his body late this afternoon.” Mamma was pleased. “You keeled him, Cade?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I imagine Tocko. Or had him killed. Anyway I found him on my boat this morning.”

Mamma Salvatore shook her head. “No. Eef that was how it was, Tocko would not be so angry. No. Joe was too valuable to Tocko. Now he has no one to do his dirty work.”

“He has the Squid.”

Mamma was pleasantly high. “The Squid doesn’t know pee from peanuts.”

“Then who killed Joe?”

The fat woman sipped at her wine. “Who can tell? Joe has needed keeling for years.” She giggled. “Then there is the girl on your boat.”

“What about her?”

“Tocko turned her in. Right after I saw you by the post office this morning, Tocko called Immigration and told them the foreign-born wife of one of his former employees had entered the country illegally but he would be glad to post bond eef they would parole her een his custody unteel she could locate her husband.”

“I figured that when I saw Tocko and an immigration man hot-footing it up the levee.”

Mamma winked salaciously. “Is good?”

Cade shook his head. “I wouldn’t know.”

Mamma laughed into one of her bracelets of wrinkles on her fat arms. “Ha.”

“I mean it.”

Mamma was serious. “Then you are fool. Is what young women are for. Is what Tocko did to your wife. Is what Moran did, too. Everyone in town was talking.”

Cade realized he was sweating again. “You know this to be true, Mamma?”

The fat woman shook her head. “I did not see them in bed. But I woman. I was young once. I can tell. You do not get thee deep shadows under thee eyes from frying fish.” She pressed her nose to the screen. “But what are you doing here? Papa and I hoped you were a long way by now.”

All of Cade’s muscles and glands ached dully. His nerve ends felt like they had been rubbed raw. Quiet and peace, the medic had told him! “I’m anchored out in the river,” he told Mamma. “I’m headed for Barataria Bay and I need a little more gas.”

“Wait,” Mamma said, quietly. “Wait. I will get Sal.”

Cade watched the fat woman waddle away across the kitchen and disappear through the swinging door. They were ignorant, sensuous, semi-illiterate, two of the last of the freebooters on the river; but Mamma and Sal were his kind of people. There were no gaps in their friendship. When they liked you they liked you.

The scuff of feet in grass attracted Cade’s attention and he backed swiftly into the dark shadows beyond the light pouring out the open kitchen door. The Squid, his grotesquely small head bobbling as he peered hopefully into the dark, was padding down the side of the old wooden restaurant.

The butterflies returned to Cade’s stomach as he drew his gun.

The Squid was rounding the building now, sniffing like a hound dog on the trail of a coon. Cade attempted to back still deeper into the shadows. It was a mistake. His right heel struck the bottom case of a stacked tier of empty Coca Cola cases and as he tried to catch his balance he knocked the whole tier over in a clatter of broken bottles and thudding cases.

The Squid, trotting now, came over to the sound. “You there in the dark. Who are you?”

The palm of Cade’s hand was slippery with sweat. He could kill the Squid all right, but what happened then? Tocko might or might not be able to pin Joe Laval on him but there would be no doubt about the Squid. Killing the Squid in cold blood could mean only one thing.

The Squid continued to advance. Saliva drooled from the corners of his mouth as he recognized Cade. “So you came back, eh? Tocko is smart. Go see why Mamma is so excited, he tol’ me, an’ it’s you.” The Squid reached out a big hand. “You shouldn’t have done it, Cade. You shouldn’t have killed Joe. Tocko tol’ me if I found you I could have all the fun I wanted.” The big man’s eyes gleamed wetly in the starlight. “Go on. Hit me with your gun. Then I’ll hit you back.”

Cade fought down his recurring desire to be sick as the Squid’s clammy fingers caressed his face, insistent, urgent, demanding.

“Go on. Hit me,” the Squid whispered.

Cade raised the pistol in his hand, then held it level with his ear, as Sal opened the screen door of the kitchen and came over to where he and the Squid were standing. As tall a man as the Squid, outweighing him by fifty pounds, the swart-faced, aging Portuguese caught the Squid by one shoulder and turned him around as easily as if he were revolving a glass under one of the beer taps of his bar.

When Sal was excited he ran his words together. His words ran together now.