The Big Bite

The cabin cruiser left the seaward side of the island as soon as the moon had gone below the horizon. The boat moved very quietly, the diesel making only the softest of putting sounds as the helmsman throttled so that he was barely making headway. When far enough out so the motor noise would not reach the mainland, he opened the throttle sharply. The cruiser picked up speed, its sharp bow cleaving the dark, warm water and leaving a turbulent wake of phosphorescence behind.

“Let’s hope that fool fish patrol isn’t out at this time of night,” the man lounging in the cabin said. He spoke contemptuously as if the Mexican Coast Guard was really only a minor annoyance.

“We could put on the lights,” the helmsman said. “That would keep them from getting suspicious if they saw us.”

“Then, sure as hell, someone would spot us from shore,” the other man said in a grumbling tone. He was big, a vague, sprawled shadow in the faint glow from the binnacle. Long, heavy legs in walking-length khaki shorts were thrust solidly out in front of him. Besides the shorts and rope-soled sandals, he wore nothing. His torso showed thick from front to back, covered with matted hair going gray in places. The gray hair and the fact that his head was completely bald made him look older than he was. A closer examination revealed the clearness of his pale blue eyes and the smooth texture of his tanned skin. He was barely forty, a strong man with a brutal look about him.

The helmsman said, “It should be okay to smoke now.” Taking one hand from the wheel, he worked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, dug a match from his trousers and flipped it alight with his thumbnail. When he took a deep drag on the cigarette, his profile showed the clean, sharply delineated features that some men find a nuisance because this marks them as “pretty boys” and other men find an asset because a certain kind of woman is attracted to them. The helmsman was one who had often found his features an asset. His name was Nigel Forrest and he spoke an obvious British English despite his efforts to use American slang.

“Nige,” the big man said lazily, “how long do you figure for this?”

The helmsman squinted into the darkness ahead. “A half hour if the currents don’t hold us out of the passage too long. Or were you talking about the whole job? The answer to that is—I don’t know. Natalie’s still keeping the details to herself.”

“I meant this job—tonight,” the big man said. “It’s a hell of a fuss to get somewhere that’s only twenty minutes away in a straight line. And why all this pussyfooting? Why not dump the guy here and forget about him?”

“Stop griping,” Forrest said. “You knew what working for a woman was like when you took the job, Tiber.”

The big man took a cigar from a cardboard packet on the seat beside him and jammed his teeth into the end. “I never did like working for a woman.”

“You never had a chance at so much money before, either.”

“I haven’t seen any of it yet.”

Forrest took a final drag on his cigarette and crushed it on the linoleum-covered floor with the tip of one rubber-soled shoe. “You will. Natalie’s got her old man’s touch. He was the smoothest operator on the Continent. Not one of his men was ever caught until Tinsley was killed and Natalie went into hiding. It doesn’t pay to go on your own when you can work for a really smart operator. And that’s what she is.”

“I suppose so,” Tiber said. He looked through the door aft where a large canvas bundle lay motionless on the deck. As grumpy as he felt, he had to admit it was a neat, workmanlike job.

Forrest said, “That snooper never knew what hit him. And when he comes to, he won’t know how he got to where he’s going.”

“I still think we should dump him,” Tiber said. “What if he’s smart enough to get away?”

Forrest examined this idea. First they would put the man—who carried identification as Orvil Curtis and was supposed to be here on a vacation, fishing—shore and well up in the shade where tomorrow’s sun wouldn’t broil him before he came out of the hypodermic. Then they would take the dinghy they were towing, and which he had rented on the mainland the day before, and make sure that the reefs on the seaward side of the island tore out its bottom. When Curtis was found—if anyone was ever fool enough to stop at Fog Island and find him—he would either be dead of starvation or thirst, or completely mad. Without the dinghy, he couldn’t get off, and not even a top-flight swimmer could buck the currents and get away.

“If he is found,” Forrest said, “it’ll look as if he had a wreck. If he should survive, he won’t remember enough about this to implicate us.”

They went on in silence, only the throttled roar of the engine marring the soft quiet of the dark sea. Forrest handled the cruiser skillfully, and when he reached the island, he let the currents take them in just far enough before he turned on the power and fought the current trying to throw the cruiser against the sharp rocks that rose protectively like black teeth. Those rocks rimmed the island except for a small, rocky, reef-bound beach on the seaward side and a narrow, almost invisible channel that faced the mainland, which lay some forty minutes away.

Inside its protective wall of rock, Fog Island was a miasma. Due to a contrast in the temperatures of the ocean air and the winds off the coast of this part of Mexico, an almost constant mist rose from the interior. This was a swamp, dotted with a few trees and a few bushes in the drier spots, but mostly it was a sinkhole of mud oozing with brackish, un-drinkable water. No one lived there; as far as anyone knew, nothing lived there. It was said that even the sea birds feared it. The lack of guano on the rocks seemed to substantiate this. The natives on the mainland, even the better-educated people in La Cruz believed that Fog Island was inhabited by a steam-breathing spirit. None of them fished close by, not even when they could see a school running. What were a few pesos compared to one’s sanity—or one’s soul?

Forrest located the narrow, almost invisible channel and maneuvered the cruiser along the corridor and its two sharp bends with no more than a foot to spare on either side. The tide was running, but slowly, and he had little trouble bringing them into the tiny bay. He eased up to a shelf of rock which made a natural pier and Tiber went forward and tied up to a projection of stone that stuck up to form a hook.

“Turn on the spot,” he called. In the tiny, rock-enclosed bay, his voice echoed and re-echoed.

Forrest snapped on the harsh white light and adjusted it so that the beam flooded the rock pier and the narrow path that ran up the rocks and disappeared into them. It was up there they had to take Curtis.

When Forrest reached the deck, Tiber had the canvas off the body and neatly folded. The man lay motionless. He was of average height, brown-haired, with plain, undistinguished features; he looked to be in his early thirties. He could be nobody; he could be someone very important, very dangerous. They couldn’t take the chance of waiting to find out.

“Up,” Forrest said, taking the ankles.

Tiber snorted, got the body about the middle, and hoisted it, fireman fashion, over his shoulder. With the legs dangling down his back and the head and limp arms flopping against his stomach, he started up the narrow pathway.

Forrest came leisurely behind, his rubber-soled shoes finding footing easily on the rock. When it seemed that the path ended, there was a sharp turn, a widening crack, and then they could smell the stench of rotting vegetation and hear the hum of insects. Tiber began to pant as the pathway became steeper.

“We could leave him in the cave there,” he said, jerking his head at an opening to the left.

Forrest was using his flashlight now that they were out of range of the cruiser’s spot, and he flashed the light into the cave. There was nothing visible but a flat space of white, hard sand and then the dark swallowed up the beam of his light. He shivered. He did not relish places such as that.

“Orders,” he reminded Tiber, and they went on up.

There was a sharp pitch and then, at the top, four feet of dirt covered with thorn bushes. Beyond that lay the edge of the oozing mud. The fog that rose from it was light, wraiths of dirty white rising and twisting from its surface.

“Gawd, what a stink!”

“You’re too tenderhearted,” Forrest mocked. “Drop him farther along. We don’t want him rolling down the pathway and breaking his neck.”

“It’d be easier on him,” Tiber said, but he did what he was told.

Leaving the body sprawled on the narrow dirt track where two stunted trees would shade it from the coming sun, Tiber turned carefully and picked his way back to where Forrest held the light. They went back down, quiet now. And they remained so while Forrest eased them out of the gut into open water. He took the same route back as that which had brought them there.

Tiber lit the cigar he had been chewing on. “I like a good, clean killing myself.”

“Of course, like breaking a man’s neck, or hitting him so hard in the midriff that he ruptures inside and bleeds to death internally.”

“That’s better than what Curtis’ll go through.”

Forrest put more speed into the cruiser. He was tired; he wanted a drink and a wash and then bed. Tiber wanted only bed. The carrying of the body had taken little of his strength, but he had been on the alert for over twenty-four hours, keeping an eye on Curtis, and he was tired.

• • •

On Horsetail Island, so called because from the heights over La Cruz its growth of palms made it look like nothing so much as an arched horsetail, the woman the men had called Natalie Tinsley reclined in a canvas beach chair and wriggled brown toes as she sipped a daquiri. It was a soft, warm evening with no light but that of the stars, the kind of night in which she liked to lie, as now, with her clothing off.

She enjoyed the feeling of the air on her sleek, tanned body, but she was wise enough not to lie so when the men were on the island. She was no child; she knew well enough that even had she not been physically attractive, this self-imposed isolation would have made her so to Forrest and Tiber. Particularly Tiber, she thought; Forrest had some of the qualities of a machine about him. In some respects she was glad; in others, she was bothered. Forrest’s interest in his work at times appeared to amount to devotion. She was not accustomed to finding herself relegated to second place as far as men were concerned.

She did not rise to put on her brief costume—halter top and shorts—until she could hear their footsteps on the path from the boat dock. When they came to where she was by the pond, she was dressed and smoking a cigarette.

“All finished,” Forrest said.

“Good. Have a drink. No trouble at all?”

“None,” Forrest said. He told her what they had done.

Tiber yawned widely, and turned away. “Me for bed,” he said. He lumbered off.

Forrest fixed drinks for both of them, took a small canvas-and-iron footstool and drew it near her beach chair. “Isn’t it about time we were let in on what’s going to happen?”

“What do you want to know, Nigel?”

“You keep telling us there’ll be money when we’ve delivered the goods. What goods? And how much money? We haven’t seen a ruddy peso since we arrived here.”

“Have you needed one?” Her voice was light, mocking. “Do you want to go in and see the night life of La Cruz?”

“It would probably be more exciting than what I get here.”

His tone bothered her. It lacked the usual machine-like quality. Draining her glass, she rose. “I’ll tell you when the time comes. Good night, Nigel.”