Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (30 page)

 
          
“I
guess it is,” Kirby said.

 
          
“I
hate art.” Darryl nodded. “Nuff said?”

 
          
“Nuff
said,” Kirby agreed.

  
 
          
He
had dinner at El Tulipan with a girl named Donna who ran one of the gift shops
in town. They had drinks after at Fido’s, listening to Rick play the piano,
Rick announcing to the world at large, “I’m getting drunk, but I never make
mistakes.” Donna had to retire early, so Kirby roved on, not expecting much,
having used up his psychic energy on Darryl Pinding, Senior, just fooling
around now.

 
          
Back
at Fido’s around midnight, there was Tandy at the bar, talking with two
American college boys. She left them, carried her glass over to Kirby, and
said, “You and Daddy all talked out?”

 
          
“Your
father’s a forceful personality,” Kirby said.

 
          
“I
didn’t see you fight him off much,” she said.

 
          
Kirby
looked at her. “Honey,” he said, “if
you
haven’t got ahead of him in thirty years, how do you expect me to do it in an
hour?” She blinked. She frowned. “Twenty-eight,” she said, and knocked back
some of her drink.

 
          
“My
apologies.”

 
          
“The
sun ages you,” she said, forgiving him. “Every fucking thing ages you, come to
that. Where are you staying?”

 
          
“Nowhere
yet.”

           
Surprised, she managed to focus on
him, saying, “You don’t have a hotel room?”

 
          
“Not
yet.”

 
          
She
laughed, a throaty chuckle that suggested the baritone she would be in 20
years. “You’re a damn beach bum!” she said.

 
          
“I
told you earlier,” he patiently explained, “I flew in this morning, thought I
might fly out again this afternoon, never got around to it.”

 
          
“That’s
right, you’re a pilot, I forgot.
Come on and sleep on the
Cow.”

 
          
He
considered that. “Daddy?”

 
          
“When
Daddy sleeps, Daddy sleeps. That’s one place, Kirby, wdiere I will not put up
with trouble.”

 
          
He
gave her an admiring grin. “Tandy, you’re an interesting woman. You have
depths.”

 
          
“Check
it out,” she said.

 
          
If
Daddy slept through all that, his subconscious must have thought they were
sailing through a hurricane. Tandy’s elegantly cramped quarters were below, a
long isosceles triangle beneath the foredeck, while Daddy slept in the convertible
sitting lounge above. A small air conditioner competed with the capacity of two
active human bodies to generate heat, and lost. Everybody’d had a bit too much
to drink, Tandy refused to permit any light at all, and
The Laughing Cow
bobbed and rolled in its mooring in arhythmic
sequences that Kirby could never quite adapt to. The whole thing became as much
an engineering problem as anything else, but one well worth the solving.
Slippery rubbery flesh slid and tumbled, muscles moved beneath the skin, arms
and hands reached for purchase and slid away. “I think it goes like this,”
Kirby said.

 
          
“Oh,
Jesus. That’s the way, that’s the way.”

 
          
Kirby
chewed on a nipple that tasted of salt. Breath in his ear sounded like fanoff
surf. The rhythms of sea and man merged and separated, merged and separated.
“God, I’m thirsty!” Tandy cried, and collapsed like a sail, in the calm after a
storm. Kirby had never heard a woman say precisely
that
in such a situation before.

           
A lot of elbows woke him, some of
them his own. Cool darkness, the hush of a nearby air conditioner, all these
elbows and knees and— ouch—foreheads in this too-small bunk. Memory came to his
rescue just as Tandy patted him all over, hoarsely whispering, “Who the fuck
are you?”

 
          
“Kirby
Galway,” he told her. “I’m the pilot. One of the better guys.” “Shit,” she
said, “you probably are, at that.” She laid her hot dry head on his chest, and
he put an arm around her vulnerable thin shoulders. “What a life,” she said,
and they slept.

 
          
The
sun that had greeted Kirby in the sky early that morning had a little later
peeked down through the moist layers of leaf and branch and vine and foliage to
the jungle floor in the Maya Mountains near the Guatemalan border where it
caught glimpses of a hunched hurrying figure in camouflage fatigues, moving
west, staring about himself, nervous, flinching from every jungle sound,
occasionally staring up in anguish at the watching sun, as though it were a
hawk and he a vole.

 
          
Vernon
panted as he moved, more from fear than exertion. He hadn’t expected another
summons from the Colonel so soon, nor had he realized before last night just
how completely he was in the Colonel’s power. He could no longer refuse the
man, was no longer his own master. The Colonel could destroy Vernon at any
time, not by reaching into his holster for that big Colt .45, but simply by
passing on to the British Army or the Belizean government the proof of Vernon’s
. . .

 
          
.
. . treason.

           
“It means
nothing”
Vernon gasped, hurrying to meet his master. Guatemala
could never invade, could never capture Belize. Taking the Colonel’s money was
dishonorable, yes, chicanery at worst, because it was not within Vernon’s
power, or anyone’s power, to sell Belize to Guatemala. And yet, and yet . . .

 
          
Everything
was coming together at once, in the most terrible way. He had murdered Valerie
Greene, yes he had, he had murdered her just as surely as if he had done it
himself with his own hand. But he was not cut out to be a murderer; too late he
understood that. He wanted to be a man with no conscience at all, and he was
riddled with conscience as another man might be riddled with leprosy. The sting
of his petty treason was as nothing to the savage bum of his guilt as a
murderer.

 
          
And
just as the Colonel held Vernon’s fate and future in the palm of his hand, so
did the skinny black man, Vernon’s partner in murder. He had disappeared
without a word, without a word except for a circular trail of Land Rover parts
around Punta Gorda. Presumably he had fled the country; certainly, the police
were looking for him. Could it be (astonishing idea) that he too had been
unequal to murder, had been unhinged by it, driven to flight? If so, and if he
were found, he would surely spill the whole story,
starting
with Vernon’s name.

 
          
“Too
many things,” Vernon muttered, thrashing through the undergrowth, the moisture
of his face part sweat and part dew and part tears. The wet fronds slapped at
him, the ground was soggy and treacherous beneath his feet, and he could never
entirely hide from the sun.

 
          
The
Daimler wasn’t yet there. Good; it gave Vernon a chance to get control of
himself, calm down, dry his dripping face on his shirttail. He walked back and
forth in the clearing, in and out of sunlight, commanding himself to be at
peace. The Colonel would not betray him, because he was still too useful. The
skinny black man would not be found and would not return. Be calm, he told
himself, be tranquil, be at rest.

 
          
How
he longed to be at rest.

 
          
The
Daimler came slowly through the jungle, like a whale, like a black puddle.
Vernon stood to the side of the dirt track as the Daimler approached, sunlight
winking at him from its glass and chrome. The big machine stopped beside him,
its passenger compartment window slid smoothly down, and the Colonel appeared
in the dark rectangle, leaning forward, eyes hidden by large dark sunglasses.
Behind him the feral woman sat reading a French magazine: E
lie,
Vernon, inadequately protected behind his own sunglasses,
blinked and blinked.

 
          
The
Colonel extended a ringed hand out the window, holding a white envelope. “This
is for you,” he said.

 
          
Vernon
took the envelope. It was softly thick with currency, a lot of currency.
What does he want from me?
Why did
things always have to move so inexorably from the theoretical to the real?

 
          
The
Colonel had something else for him; a single sheet of paper. Vernon took it,
and saw it was a Xerox of a part of one of the maps he’d given the Colonel the
last time, a map showing recent refugee settlements. One of these was now
circled in red. As he frowned at this map, wondering what it meant, the Colonel
said, “On Friday, the day after tomorrow, a group of British journalists will
be in Belice.”

 
          
“Journalists?”
Vernon reluctantly looked up from the map. “I don’t know anything about that.”

 
          
“They
are coming,” the Colonel said. “One of the things they will do in Belice is
visit a refugee village, on Friday afternoon.” Pointing at the map in Vernon’s
hands, he said, “You will see to it
that
is the village they visit.”

 
          
“But—
Journalists? That has nothing to do with my department, I don’t—”

 
          
“You
have a driver? Your confederate?”

 
          
Shocked
that the Colonel knew so much about him, Vernon stammered, “He’s— he’s gone.
Ran away a week ago. No-nobody knows why.”

 
          
“Someone
else then,” the Colonel said, dismissing the problem with a flick of his
fingers. The woman turned a page of her magazine; this time, she had no
interest in Vernon at all. The Colonel, delegating authority, said, “You’ll
arrange it. The journalists go to
that
village.”

 
          
“I
don’t know if I can—”

 
          
“It
is necessary,” the Colonel said. He confronted Vernon, impassive behind his
dark glasses, waiting for another objection, prepared to slap it down. It is
necessary; that was all his creature needed to know.

 
          
I
will not think about why the Colonel wants all these things,
Vernon
told himself, his plans are foolishness and
vain, nothing can happen, nothing can
change.
“I— I’ll try,” he said miserably.

 
          
“That
village,” the Colonel said, and the window smoothly rolled up, ending the
conversation.

 
          
Bewildered,
bedeviled, hopelessly entangled,
Vernon
stood and watched the Daimler drive away,
returning the Colonel to his world of certainties. Rest. Tranquility. What was
going to happen? Would it never end? What terrible fate was he fashioning for
himself?

 
          
Nearby,
in bright sun, a large parrot on a branch looked at
Vernon
, spread his wings, and laughed.