Color Him Dead (8 page)

She was laughing, great whooping shrieks of relieved, hysterical laughter. “But what a ridiculous name! You couldn’t have made it up.”

“I didn’t.”

“But it’s some other girl, isn’t that obvious to you by

now? I may not remember, but I’ve got the proof, a birth certificate—”

“Fake ones cost twenty-five bucks.”

“—and a transcript of credits from Texas Christian. Can that be bought? And even if it could, can you honestly say that I act like some little illiterate off a Nebraska farm?”

He was frowning at her, chewing his lip. The gun still lay in his hand, but she no longer feared it. She had a feeling the danger was past, and that she could move freely now without interference. Tentatively, she picked up her shorts and slid her feet into them. As she pulled them up, she saw that he was not even looking at her. He was rewrapping the gun, sadly, regretfully.

“It had to be some other girl,” she said with a tentative kindness in her voice.

He looked up quickly, but his eyes revealed nothing. “Yes,” he said.

She put on her halter, then lit a cigarette. The smoke tasted sweet; the air smelled wonderful, the world looked beautifully clean and bright. She had been near death, but now the crisis was over and she felt an intense curiosity about the man.

“Did she really do that to you, all that you said?”

He nodded slowly, fastening the package around his waist. He rose to his feet and said: “I’ll put your boat back in running order.”

She watched him move to the boat in his awkward, hobbling gait; He seems terribly disappointed, she thought, and then: He doesn’t have to be disappointed.

“What are you going to do now?”

He paused, then shrugged and bent over the boat.

“Are you going to live on my island?”

“No.”

“Well … I could run you over to the mainland.”

“I’ll swim.”

She felt anger pinch her nostrils. She wanted to say: Look here, can’t you see I’m trying to wipe out this horrible scene? I’m willing to be friends. But the moment she thought it, she knew it was impossible. The pace of their relationship had been set; there could be no slow journey into friendship, only a breathtaking leap into fiery combative passion. She became aware of the moisture in her armpits and felt the dampness in the small of her back. She pulled at the band of her shorts, let the cool air find its way down. Why did the man make her so edgy? She found her lips dry and licked them. She watched him straighten from the boat and walked to the edge of the water. Wait, she thought. We aren’t finished … are we?

He made a shallow dive into a wave and came up swimming. He disappeared around the rock without looking back.

She fell onto the sand and tried to cry, but her emotions were exhausted. After a time she climbed to the top of the rock. She saw his snorkel bobbing in the water a hundred yards away. He was a strong swimmer. She remembered his heavy arms, his wide, deep chest, and all his burning, bitter passion. God, how would it feel to have all that inside her?

A flash of white drew her eye to the tower. Doxie stood there with his binoculars; not even in the middle of the ocean could she escape those bulging eyes.
Look away, Doxie-lamb, and may you die of frustration.
She took off her halter and shorts and walked to the edge of the rock. She poised with her arms above her head, then plunged into the swelling sea. It felt cool against her fevered flesh.

Drew pulled himself through the water and looked down through the mask. He hoped he’d see something to fight, something on which he could release his frustrated readiness to kill.

But the purple depths were empty; the gun pressed against his belly like an overdue fetus waiting to be born.

At first he had thought she was lying, for it was logical that she’d want to change her identity after the murder. But if she’d feigned amnesia, why take it back only two years? Why not ten? No, she really believed she had lived the genteel life on a Texas ranch, with a genteel father and mother. And she had the documents to prove it. Of course, her current husband could have arranged that; he had the money and the opportunity, but what was his motive? To protect her?

It was too much to think about now. He was sure of only three things: that she was the Edith who had destroyed him, that her amnesia was real and not feigned, and that he had no heart for revenge against a mindless woman.

But he was sure as hell not finished with her.

He dragged himself onto the pebbled beach of Barrington’s Isle two hundred yards from where he’d left his crutch. He lay for a moment catching his breath, then began crawling across the stones, thankful that it was growing dusk and nobody could see him.

The crutch wasn’t where he’d left it. Puzzled, he pulled himself up and leaned against a boulder, searching.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

Drew wheeled and saw the man in white riding pants standing just outside the tall grass. He was holding the crutch in his right hand, and his left hand was twitching against his leg. Drew felt his muscles tense: So this is Doxie, the man Leta feared and Edith despised. He didn’t look so tough.

Suddenly Doxie threw the crutch. It clattered on the rocks in front of Drew.

“There. Use it to hobble off this island.”

Drew bent over, picked it up and settled it on his arm. “Thanks. It’ll come in handy when I get ready to leave.”

“Now.”

“I’m not ready.”

Doxie smiled as though he found the remark extremely gratifying.

“My name is Eudoxie,” he said. “If that means nothing to you, then I am willing to leave it that way. I could tell you that I am Barrington’s manager and have a right to throw you off the island. But I don’t want that to influence you. I can tell you also that within three hours I could have a squad of policemen here with warrants charging you with trespassing. But I don’t intend to call the police. I could intimidate you with the gun, but—” he jerked the clip from his belt and dropped the gun at his feet—“I discard it. Now you will leave because I tell you to leave. Let that be reason enough.”

Drew was puzzled by Doxie. He spoke with the arrogance of a man with a secret weapon. The gun was gone; perhaps he had a knife. If so, he wasn’t worried. A knife wasn’t as good a hand-to-hand weapon as many amateurs believed. A surprise weapon, yes, for an intermediate distance, yes, and against another knife-fighter, yes. But as a weapon of intimidation, against a man versed in the art of claw-and-gouge, it wasn’t worth a damn.

“I will count to ten,” said Doxie, “One …”

Drew thought of his little Browning, then decided against it. By the time he removed it from its waterproof cocoon, Doxie could retrieve his own .45, and Drew would be outgunned.

“Two …”

Doxie was taking his time, smiling as he counted. The man really wanted to fight, and Drew had a sudden, intuitive flash: He’s doing it for Edith, playing it big, riding no-hands, showing his biceps. God, wherever she goes there’s discord, fighting, blood….

He felt the weight of fatigue on his shoulders, thinking of the problems the fight would bring. Even if he won, he’d have a new and powerful enemy. If he lost … Hell, why think about it? The fight would come; very well, he would enjoy the inevitable. Let the blows strike and the blood flow and release this pent-up frustration, give yourself up to a destructive frenzy.

He set his muscles and found a firm footing for his good leg. He wouldn’t try to box, for he was like a hippopotamus on his feet. He’d wait for Doxie to get close, then he’d lunge and carry him to the ground. There they’d be equals.

“Four …”

“Don’t stall, Dox. Get it started.”

The man came forward, dancing lightly on the high-heeled, sharp-toed riding boots. Drew watched his hands, waiting for him to get near enough for his lunge. He couldn’t figure it, the man didn’t have his fists doubled. Maybe he knew karate, or judo, or—

Doxie stopped and made a half-turn. Drew didn’t see the leg until it had traveled halfway to him. Then, expecting a blow to the groin, he raised one knee and twisted sideways. But the foot kept rising, up and up; pain exploded in his jaw and he staggered. His bad leg buckled and he sank to one knee. He saw the foot coming again as the man pirouetted; Drew ducked his head, felt the skin rip off his cheekbone and the blood course down his cheek. His stunned brain grasped the fact that those shiny, sissy-looking boots were backed with solid steel toes, and his opponent was a master of that century-old French art of
Savate.

Drew lunged, but it was a desperate lunge which brought him surging up from the ground with his fist clenched and all his weight behind it. The single blow had to do the job because he’d fall flat on his face afterward.

He connected; not solidly, for the man was quick as a cobra, but enough to knock Doxie rolling down onto the shelving beach. Drew lunged after him, hoping to pin him down, but the man wriggled free and jumped up. And now it was Drew who was down rolling, twisting, turning, trying to escape the sharp toe which hammered his body, trying to reach the water, where he could fight on equal terms—

He jolted against a boulder and stopped. Doxie, his face blood-red and eyes shining, approached slowly.

“You’d better leave while you can walk.”

“Go piss up a tree.”

Drew was watching the right foot, the one which had been doing all the damage. He meant to get that shiny boot in his hand and twist the leg until the bone cracked. He saw the foot move slightly, then—

Crack! The landscape shook and a new stream of blood erupted from his head.

“You watched the wrong foot, Seright. Here!”

Zzzzzzp! This time against Drew’s temple. His vision blurred and a high thin whistle shrieked inside his head. God, he thought, the man has the skill of an expert torturer; he knows just how hard to kick without knocking me out. But his admiration was lost in his attempt to grab the eternally shifting pointed boot, now grown so large that it filled his vision. But the leather was oiled and slick, and Doxie pulled free and stepped back a pace.

“If I really wanted to damage you, Seright, I could clip off an ear or rip your nose loose from your skull as easily as you tear open a pack of cigarettes. Not even your little black whore would want you then. If I wanted to kill you I could drive my toe under your rib cage and crush your heart. But I’ll give you another chance to leave peaceably.”

This is ridiculous, thought Drew. I should say yes and go away, then come back to fight another day. That’s what a sensible man would do, but hell, I can’t let this man put me down….

Carefully he gauged the distance to that right foot. About five feet. With one lunge he might make it—

A voice boomed down from somewhere above, a deep bellow in patois. It made Doxie look up and gave Drew the opening he needed. He lunged, seized the foot, and twisted with all his strength. He hugged it in a grip like death, pushing with his shoulder like a line man in a scrimmage, until he thought a blood vessel would burst in his skull, feeling the other’s foot thumping against the top of his skull in a steady

tattoo which each time drove him deeper and deeper into the pit of unconsciousness. He felt a final explosive starburst on top of his skull and knew that this time he was going out for good. He gave a violent, twisting lurch on the boot just before the blackness covered him. And in that dream world, when it was all so remote that it seemed not to concern him, he felt a faint pop against his ear and heard Doxie’s voice let out a shrill yelp of pain….

His hearing returned before anything else. He knew he was in a rowboat. He heard the splash of oars and felt the heaving swell of the sea. He was wrapped in a cocoon of pain from the waist up.

He opened his eyes and saw the night sky above him, fully black and sprinkled with stars. His head was lying on something soft and resilient. He turned his head and his nose touched soft fabric; he knew that smell of sun-dried clothing and that other, pungent, exciting odor.

“Leta—”

Her hand touched his lips; her face bent low and filled his vision. “We are all right. You sleep.”

“Where are we going?”

“It is for you to say.”

His brain was in fragments too small to piece together. He raised his head and saw that they were halfway to Petty-lay. The calm sea gleamed like tinfoil which had been crumpled, then smoothed. The Pleiades were low in the Eastern sky, and he knew he’d been out for about two hours. A giant sat in the middle thwart, handling a pair of two-man oars as though they were canoe paddles.

“He is Chaka, who sells me rum,” said Leta in answer to his whispered question. “He stopped the red man from killing you.”

“He didn’t kill him?”

“No,
moi dudu.
He picked him off and threw him aside.” She paused. “You wish to hide until you are well? My cousin she has a place back in the bush.”

“All right.” He lay back, suddenly tired and sleepy. A meteor streaked out of Gemini and made a dying flare in the west. He closed his eyes and thought:
The ancients used to call them evil omens….

Soft hush of surf … grating of sand on the keel of the boat. Drew tried to rise but his limbs were weighted; he felt himself lifted, in two arms like tree-trunks, one around his back and the other beneath his knees. The man walked; each footfall drove shafts of pain into Drew’s head. He let himself escape into a cool oblivion where pain was only a distant echo….

Roar of truck engine … soft lap beneath his rolling head … murmur of patois, Leta’s soft voice, and the giant’s rumble. Drew’s ears popped; he felt the center of gravity shift to the rear, pulling his head against Leta’s stomach. We’re going up, he thought, up into the bush, into the rain shadow of those craggy peaks. The acrid breath of the engine mingled with the green smell of the jungle, the heavy musk of decay. Life … death … how close the two….

Consciousness left him. The next sound he heard was the crackle of a grass mat beneath his back. He smelled the damp musk of earthen floor and the smoke of a kerosene lamp. He opened his eyes and saw a pair of hands holding a warm cloth to his bruise-dappled stomach. The fingers were brown, with white luminous crescents beneath the nails. They transferred the cloth to a blackened saucepan set on a charcoal cookpot; twisted the cloth until water spurted between the fingers, then opened to show pink palms with thick pads of muscle between thumb and forefinger. Leta’s hands, strong and gentle. A plume of smoke curled from the lamp beside her. She touched the cloth to his stomach and looked up at him with sadness in her eyes.