A Deadly Shade of Gold (25 page)

They were about five or six miles out. They stopped the motor and rowed the last mile in.

"Sam said he estimated that the cruiser would run for maybe an hour before the bilge got full enough to stop the engines. Then it would go down pretty fast, and it would be nearly twenty miles out by then. About two or three days later we heard they were hunting for a boat. There were some search planes. Some men came and asked questions at the hotel. But all they could say was that the boat had left one night. That was about two months ago. After he did it, Sam wanted the money right away so he could leave. But Carlos stalled him. He said he had to make a trip to Mexico City to get it. He said he would go soon. I guess I was going to go with him. I don't know. Maybe I was partly to blame. He wanted to shove some of the blame off on me, so
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he could feel a little better about it.

"Then one morning Carlos was sitting by the pool and I was swimming. I heard a woman scream. I climbed out and I asked Carlos if he heard it. I was looking around. He didn't answer me. I looked at him again, and I realized he had made that sound. The doctor came up from Mazatlan by float plane. At first he thought Carlos would die. He was unconscious for four days.

Then he was conscious, with his whole left side paralyzed and he couldn't talk. The doctor said there might be some future improvement, but probably not much. Dead brain cells don't come back. Sam was drunk for days.

"Then I found him in the study. He'd opened the glass case and he was putting those gold statues in the case Carlos had had made for them when he left Cuba. They go in little fitted places. He said he was going to get his money one way or another, and the whole thing made no sense at all unless he got his money. He said he was going to take them away and sell them to Cal Tomberlin. He said he'd earned them. I said they were worth more than what Carlos had promised him, that Cal had offered Carlos a lot more. He said then it would have to be a bonus, and the way he felt about it, the bonus could be for the woman.

"But maybe Cal wouldn't want to pay him as much as he had offered Carlos anyway. He told me I should leave with him. But he was acting sort of wild and unreliable. I didn't see how he could get those things across the border. He looked as if he was going to get into terrible trouble. And by then-I didn't tell him-I'd gotten into Carlos' wall safe, in his bedroom. He'd watch me with that one eye whenever I was in there. I looked everywhere and found the combination in his wallet, written on the edge of a card. I thought there would be a lot of money in there, but there was just some pesos, a little over twenty thousand pesos. And some bank books for accounts in Zurich, and the keys and records of the bank drawer in Mexico City. The money there is in American dollars.

"Sam left. That case was terribly heavy. He fixed it so he could sort of sling it on his shoulder.

He wanted to take one of the cars. I didn't want any trouble to be traced back to Carlos. I told the men not to let him take a car, to let him take the heavy case, but no car. But before he could leave, two men came. They had been at the house before. Friends of Carlos, from the old days in Havana. When they would visit him, they would have long private conferences about money and politics. They didn't know Carlos had had a stroke. It made them very nervous.

"I took them to him and showed them how to talk to Carlos. He can blink his good eye for yes and no, and if you hold his wrist steady he can scrawl simple words on a pad. I wanted to stay there, but they shoved me out of the room and locked the door. At dusk they were still in there.

Sam decided that they were going to take over, and if they knew what he was going to take, they would stop him. So he left, and he told me to tell those men, if they asked, that he'd left by boat.

He thought they would get around to looking for him.

"Those men spent a long time with Carlos. They talked to me about what the doctor had said.

They spent most of the next day with him. I guess it was slow work, finding out things from him.

Maybe he didn't want to tell them. That would make it slower. Once I listened at the door and heard Carlos make that terrible sound he makes when he gets frightened or angry.

"At last they knew all they wanted to know, from him. They found out I could open the safe.

They made me open it. I'd hidden the keys and records for the Mexico City box. They didn't seem to know or care about that. They took the Swiss bank book. They said fast things to Carlos and laughed, and the tears ran out of his good eye. They took the jade and the coin collection
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too. They asked me about Sam. One's English was good, as good as Carlos'.

"They said Carlos had done a very stupid thing, and that Sam had been very stupid to obey Carlos' orders. They said that the friends of the people who had been on that boat would be told what had happened, so that nobody would start blaming the wrong people. And they said it would be very nice if they could turn Sam over to those friends, because that would satisfy them, and then the security of a lot of people living quietly in Mexico would not be endangered through political pressures. They said it would be nice if I told them every helpful thing I could think of about Sam, because if the authorities caught him with all that gold, and if Sam talked too much about where he got it, a lot of private and semi-official arrangements might collapse, and the newspaper publicity might make certain officials take steps they had already been bribed not to take.

"I made a sort of arrangement with them. I said I would stay on and sort of take charge of the household. They gave me some money. They said they would send me draughts on the bank in Culiacan to cover household expenses, plus a salary for me. Then when Carlos dies, they'll send people to arrange about disposing of the house, getting the staff resettled, getting Mrs. Menterez into an institution. And they said I'll get a bonus at that time. But I was to live quietly. No big parties and lots of house guests like before.

"They gave me an address in Mexico City to write to if anything happens. So... I told them all I knew about Sam, about how he planned to sell the statues to Cal Tomberlin. And I told them his village slut, Felicia, might know something. They went away in their car. After a few weeks I...

thought of Gabe and sent for him. He's been here three weeks. Then yesterday I got that note...

and I wanted to know what the message was. From Sam.

Her voice had gotten increasingly husky. Her head lolled. "Please," she said in a faint voice. "I'm getting awful uncomfortable."

Perspiration darkened the blue blouse, pasting it to her midriff. I got up and stretched the stiffness out of my legs and went over and gave her three feet of slack and made the line fast in that position. She brought her arms down, moved in a small circle, rolling her shoulders.

"I've leveled with you," she said. "Completely. I've told you everything. Maybe it doesn't make me look so good. I can't help that. I know one thing in this world. If you don't take care of yourself, nobody else is going to."

"Have they sent you money?"

"Once. I guess it's going to come once a month. It wasn't as much as they said it would be."

"What are the names of those two men?"

"They never said. One was Luis and the other was Tomas. They had a white Pontiac convertible, great big sunglasses, resort clothes, a very sharp pair. The other times they were here, they were very respectful to Carlos."

"Do you know the names of the people on the boat?"

"Just the one that Cal brought to the house, the older one. Senor Mineros. I don't know his first name."

"Where does Tomberlin live?"

"He has a lot of places. The only one I was at was a sort of lodge, way up near Cobblestone Mountain. I don't mind fun and games. But that got a little too rich for me, believe me. He had a lot of kids up there that weekend. I knew most of them. It got crazy up there. You couldn't walk without stepping on a jumbled up pile of kids and getting pulled down into a lot of messy fooling around. I got out of there."

She looked at me with delicate indignation, a righteous little snippet, asking my moral approval.

"How old are you, Almah?"

"Twenty-four."

Nora was having a long wait. I looked at the lovely and slightly soiled little blondie. I wondered what I would do with her if I really had the power to judge her and sentence her. Like the true eccentric, she thought she was just like everybody else. She was a cold mischief, with looks which had kept her from paying any penalties. In a small wind in the clearing, blowing toward me, she smelled of scent, of repellent, and a small sharp smell of nervous perspiration. She was too self-involved, in money hunger and pleasure hunger, to be the legendary femme fatale. She was a blunderer, but she would keep landing on her feet. She was never going to bring anyone any luck.

She had explained something I had felt about Sam Taggart. There had been a strangeness about him. During the short time I'd been with him, I'd felt that we could never again be as close as we had once been. He'd traveled too far. That little boat ride had taken him a long long way. At the time he died, he was trying to come back, but he probably knew he could never make it all the way back. He could pretend for a time. But the act of murder was still with him. Nora would have immediately sensed that strangeness, that apartness. And she would not have rested until she learned the cause of it.

Little Almah Hichin, with her lavender eyes, and her slender girlish figure, and her greedy and available and random little loins, was going to go her way, making out, aiming for the money, spicing it with her kicks. As most of the people who would become involved with her would be as trivial as she was, she would probably do no great amount of human damage. A child of her times, running free as long as she dared, then setting herself to entrap some monied fool old enough so no childbearing would be asked of her. She felt herself to be infinitely sweet and precious and provocative. Enchantingly foolish sometimes. But talented and admirable. A lovely smile is really all a girl needs.

"Why don't you say something?" she asked.

Suddenly it didn't seem suitable to merely untie her. She would preen herself and pat her hair and tell me chidingly that I had been horrid to her. Her manner would be flirtatious and self-satisfied. I wondered if it would be possible to convince her of her own mortality, and if it would do any good. That cold little sensuous brain thought it would live forever.

"I guess I'm stalling. This isn't something I'm going to enjoy."

"What do you mean?"

I shrugged. "Chivalry or something, I guess. And when... a girl is as pretty as you are, Almah, it seems like such a hell of a waste. And, to tell the truth, I'm sort of an amateur at this. I've never killed a woman before."

Her mouth sagged and her eyes bulged. "Kill!"

"Sweetie, I told you I couldn't promise a thing."

"But I've told you everything! My God! You can't be serious! Look I'll do anything you say. You could get in terrible trouble. People will look for me."

I pointed a thumb over my shoulder. "They won't look back in that jungle. I guess I'm not doing you any favor by stalling. I know I have to do it. But I feel squeamish about it."

She tried to smile. "This is some kind of nasty joke, isn't it?"

"I wish it was. I'll make it easy on you. I won't hurt you."

"But I haven't done anything!"

"I have to do as I'm told."

I stared somberly at her. Her color had become quite ghastly. "Now wait a minute!" she said, her voice high and thin. "I'm going to get that money. Listen, you could come back with me and I could get you into the house. You could be with me every minute. You could come with me when we go to get the money. You can have half of it. You can have all of it."

"You can scream now if you want to. It might help a little. It won't make any difference, but it might help."

She had begun to babble, her voice high and thin and fast and almost out of control. "But you don't even know me. You've got no reason! Please! I can hide here. You can say you did it. Then I'll go wherever you want me to go. I can wait for you. Please. I'll belong to you. I'll do anything for you. Please don't do that to me!" She began to dash back and forth, yanking at the rope, making little yelping sounds of panic.

I went to the line and hauled it tighter than before, bringing her up onto tiptoe. Again I felt that urge to howl with sour laughter. Melodrama made me self-conscious. But I thought of what she had talked Sam into doing, and I wanted to make a lasting impression on her. I wanted her to feel death so close she could smell the shroud and the dank earth.

I took the pocket knife out and opened the ridiculously small blade. I walked up to her. Her eyes showed white all the way around the lavender irises. She had bitten into her underlip. There was a smear of blood at the corner of her mouth. She made a maddened humming sound, and her body spasmed and snapped and contorted in the animal effort to run.

She looked at the knife, and the ultimate terror of it loosened her control over her bodily functions. Now she was beyond all pretense, perhaps for the first time since childhood. Sam's last duchess. Menterez's last blonde slut. As I raised the blade, she opened her jaws wide in a final yawning caw of despair, and I lifted it above her hands and cut the line.

She fell in a sprawling soiled heap, sobbing and shuddering, rolling her face against the earth. I looked down at her for a moment, pocketed the knife and walked out to the car.

Nora started to say something, and looked at my face and stopped abruptly. She slid over and I got behind the wheel. I drove in silence to the hotel. Nora got out there.

She said, "Are we going to leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"AIl right, dear."

"I think I'll go back and pick her up."

"Yes, dear."

Fourteen

ALMAH HICHIN had taken a long time to free her hands and pull herself together enough to start walking west, toward the village. Felicia had walked it.