The Big Bite (6 page)

Knox awoke, yawned, threw back the sheet and stood up. The cool air inside the cabin washed over him pleasantly. Outside, the sun shone brightly, throwing little shafts of hard light around the edges of the drawn draperies.

He sniffed. The management seemed to have mixed their coffee pot with the air conditioner. He distinctly smelled fresh, steaming coffee.

He fumbled his way to the bathroom, where he cleared his head under the shower. He decided to shave after he had eaten, and put on bright red pajamas and headed for the kitchen.

He nearly knocked Nat down as she was coming into the bedroom with a cup of coffee balanced on a saucer. Knox said, “I forgot all about you!”

“I should pour this on your head,” she retorted.

He took the coffee from her before she did use it on him. It was strong and awakened him enough so that he could enjoy his breakfast of ham and rye bread. It was after eleven when they finished.

The telephone rang and Knox went to answer it. It was Chuco.

“Señor, was I right—about the dame, I mean?”

Knox held the receiver far enough from his ear so that Nat could hear Chuco clearly. He said, “Oh, that dame. You really had her pegged.” He went on, “In fact, I need some help with her.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse,” Knox said, and grinned as Nat chattered wordlessly at him. “Say, is that a private phone?”

“No, I’m on the switchboard. Want me to come over?”

“Yes,” Knox said. He hung up and looked at Nat. “Get into that rig of yours.”

He stood in the bedroom doorway while she wriggled into the padded foundation and worked on her wig. “I’ll railroad you out of here to Mexico City. On your way, stop and mail a letter I’m going to give you. Send it Air Special.”

Nat finished adjusting her wig. “What are you up to, Paul?”

“I need you here, but I’m afraid to have you. The best I can do is try to cover for you.”

“Damn it, I don’t want a bodyguard.”

“Nat, I just don’t want to find you scattered in the bay as shark bait.”

“All right, Paul.” There was the peal of the door chimes. “There’s your friend.”

Knox let Chuco in. “Help yourself to beer. I’ve got a little business to settle.” Leaving Chuco with a wise grin, he went into the bedroom and wrote a long note, addressed it to a San Francisco post-office box, sealed it doubly with Scotch tape, and handed it to Nat. Then he returned to the living room, leaving the bedroom door closed so that she could put on her outrageous make-up in peace.

Knox said to Chuco, “I’m in a spot. I need a man I can trust.”

Chuco lit one of Knox’s cigarettes, blew a wobbly smoke ring. “I’m listening.”

Knox sat down. “The trouble with some guys is that they don’t know what loyalty means. To them, it’s connected with the man who pays them biggest.”

Chuco looked hurt. Knox said, “That kind of guy usually ends up in the bay—shark bait.”

“I got out of L.A.,” Chuco said, “because I wouldn’t talk.”

“What does that mean? The cops weren’t going to pay you for talking.”

“Not cops. Another outfit.” He shook his head. “Tough boys.”

“I don’t know,” Knox said.

“Look,” Chuco said. “You got troubles. With the dame?”

“That’s part of it. But you can handle that for me easily enough. Mostly, it’s something else. Something a lot tougher to handle.”

Chuco blew out smoke, inhaled beer, and drew in more smoke, all in one apparently continuous motion. “Let me set it up for you. Since you came, there’s been two sides around here—you and the crew on Horsetail.”

Knox was very still. He hadn’t expected quite so much so fast from Chuco. “How do you figure that?”

“Easy.” Chuco was scornful. “That’s no natural setup out there. Right?”

“Right.”

“All right.” Pausing long enough to finish the beer, he went on, “Last night you go out there after a telephone call. You come back in one piece. So far so good. But what happens when you leave?”

“What happens?” Knox prompted.

“The Tinsley dame stays up damn near to dawn—sitting and thinking. Manuelita—that’s the maid out there I go for—and me, we can’t even use the place by the pool because she’s there. I stay until near dawn myself and the dame is still awake.”

“My charm,” Knox murmured.

Chuco looked politely skeptical. “You didn’t make the dame,” he said. “Manuelita says nobody’s made her. But she came in on her day off today and told me all they talked about out there was you.” He shook his head. “So you got a chance.”

Knox wondered what was going on behind his bedroom door at the moment. “This is getting interesting,” he said.

“I said a chance,” Chuco said. “But if she was the kind so hard up she’d sit awake all night thinking about a guy, she’d have done something before this. That Forrest is no bum, you know. And Tiber, he’s the big ape kind lots of dames go for.”

Knox was beginning to grow a little weary of Chuco’s one-track conversation. “You still haven’t said anything.”

“You went out there and you got them worried, that’s all. So I say, now there’s two sides.”

“All right,” Knox said. “That still doesn’t prove they couldn’t pay more than I could.”

Chuco looked as if he’d like to spit. “The first time I met that Tiber, he asked me a question. I didn’t answer fast enough and he belted me. Crums. Tough crums.”

Knox said, “I still don’t see where you put me.”

“You ain’t working with them. Maybe you’re muscling in on their racket.”

“Which is?”

Chuco grinned around his stub of a cigarette. “If I knew, I might muscle myself.”

“How do you know I’m not a cop?”

“What cop drives ten thousand dollars’ worth of automobile?”

“All right. What do you have to offer?”

“I know this place,” Chuco said. “I’ve got Manuelita out there.”

“So if you help me find out what the lay is, you want a cut. Salary or percentage?”

“Both,” Chuco said promptly. “I’ll take a salary and if this pays off, it comes out of my percentage.”

“All right,” Knox said. “We can arrange the details later. Right now, I want that showgirl out of here. Leave her car. I gave her enough to get to Mexico City and to last until she starts on her job.”

“A cinch.”

“Then,” Knox said, “when you come back I want to know what gives with the customers here.”

“Potbellied businessmen.” Chuco snorted. “Most of them got their own wives with them.”

“Maybe,” Knox said, “maybe not. That outfit on the island isn’t working cheap. Someone else could be trying to cut in.”

Chuco’s eyes gleamed. “Yeh, I see what you mean.”

Knox gave Chuco money. “First installment. I’m going for a walk while you take the babe off my hands.”

He left, not going into the bedroom to say goodbye to Nat, not wanting to have her away from him even for a short while—but at the same time wishing she would stay away until this was over. The trouble, he realized, was that he knew Nat too well. If she really got a good smell of a million dollars in gold, there was no telling how far she’d go to get her hands on it.

• • •

Forrest was watching with interest as Chuco led a strangely muffled girl from Knox’s cabin to a car at the edge of Viewhouse. Only when she cast off the
rebozo
she was wearing did he see that it was the stranded showgirl who had been staying at Marengo’s Cantina. He grinned wolfishly. Let Natalie add that to her problem with this Knox.

Forrest had good field glasses and a vantage point on a hill above Viewhouse from which to use them. But when Chuco and the girl had driven off, he found that there was nothing to use the glasses on. Knox was visible on the beach, but he was only strolling back and forth as if building up a pre-lunch thirst for himself.

He squatted in shade behind an outcropping of rock and considered his next move. He disliked Knox because he felt that Natalie liked him too well. He wondered how the information about the girl having been in Knox’s cabin would sit with her.

He left his watchpost and strolled into town. At Marengo’s Cantina, he draped himself on the bar, ordered a cold beer, and took a good pull at it.

“That American girl who was here—” he began.

“
Was
is correct, señor,” Marengo informed him. “I am glad of it, I assure you.”

Forrest looked casually interested. “She give you trouble?”

“No, it is that I fear she cannot pay. She comes in a car so old not even Pedro Salinas will give her money for it. She eats my food and sleeps in my best room and uses the bath water. But she does not pay.”

“She’s gone, eh? And left you holding the sack?”

“Oh, no. Just minutes ago she and that Chuco drive up. She gets her suitcase, pays me good pesos, thanks me grandly and drives away.”

“If she has money, why did you want her gone?” Forrest was genuinely curious; the convolutions of the human mind interested him.

“I tell you, Señor Forrest. Last night she goes to the new place with Chuco. Today she has pesos. So where does she get them? At the casino? Phoo! She is playing the
puta
. Now in La Cruz we have two fine girls. They will not like this if they hear. They will become angry as they should. They will come and scream and curse at the Americana. They may use the knife. There is trouble for La Cruz, trouble for Marengo. I am glad she is gone.”

Forrest had fixed his attention on one thing Marengo said. “Chuco came and got her last night?”

“
Si
. He plays the pimp now and then for the customers up there. But usually our own fine girls. Have you met them, señor …”

Forrest set his empty beer down. “No—no thanks, Marengo. Well,
adios
.”

He left, walking slowly, mulling it over. The whole affair appeared aboveboard. A stranded tart finding a way to pay her fare out of La Cruz. But why had she come here in the first place? He worked the idea over but could find nothing in it. He went aboard the cruiser and fixed himself a cold lunch from the stores in the galley. Afterwards, he enjoyed a brief siesta. When he awakened, Chuco was bouncing down the slope in an ancient Ford.

When Chuco reached the forks in the road, Forrest was waiting. Chuco stopped. Forrest said, “Want to make a buck, kid?”

The American slang and the British accent sounded odd together. Chuco only said, “What will a buck buy?”

“Make it ten.”

“Si, como no?”
Chuco was not stupid. Forrest still wore the field glasses in their case, and he needed no more to tell him what Forrest had been up to.

“Who was the dame in your car?”

“That one!” He sounded like Marengo. “The stranded Americana. She hired me to drive her to the Mexico City bus.”

“I thought she was stranded.”

Chuco shrugged and showed a five-dollar bill. “I got this for taking her to the highway.”

“Maybe she got the money from the new man, Knox. She spent the night with him, didn’t she?”

Chuco was bland, too bland. “Did she? All I know is she was there when she called me to drive her out.” There was nothing he could do about this, he knew. The field glasses and a bit of thornbush hooked to Forrest’s trousers told him the man had been up on the hill watching.

“What would a man like Knox want with a woman like her?”

Chuco decided to settle it. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what he paid her, but he got his money’s worth. I can tell you that.”

Forrest gave him his money in pesos and let him go. Then he turned back for the town to telephone. He was working on the slimmest of hunches. It was too late now to follow the girl, so he would do the next best thing.

He made two telephone calls. The first informed him that the bus the girl would have to take would reach Mexico City, via Vera Cruz, the next morning. The second call put him in touch with a man named Cuchino in Mexico City.

“One more job—an easy one,” Forrest said. He described the girl. “Catch her coming off the bus from Vera Cruz. On second thought, watch the trains and the airport, too. Call me as soon as you have anything.”

Later, over dinner, he was telling of his day. In good humor after a bath and two gin and tonics, he mimicked Chuco: “I don’t know what he paid her, but he got his money’s worth. I can tell you that.”

Unfortunately, Manuela was serving them and overheard. A well-rounded, rather pretty girl, she was usually placid. But on returning to the kitchen she appeared anything but placid. The cook found her staring hungrily at the rack of sharp knives.

Knox took dinner in the dining room on the second floor of the main Viewhouse. The two large parties of fishermen had the room fairly well-filled. There was a small table by the wide windows set between two other small tables, one occupied by the Central American diplomat and his companion, both of whom sat rigidly in their white dinner jackets and looked nowhere but at their food. The other contained the lady etymologist, dressed as she had come in from the field, in her khaki knickers. She ate slowly, taking time out now and then to stare through the windows.

Knox was served by a stout waiter with the unsmiling, expressionless face few besides the Indian ever seem able to achieve. Albondigas soup began the meal and some fine Roquefort ended it. In between, Knox succumbed to a chicken-stuffed enchilada and guacamole salad. It was very good.

The diplomat finished his meal first, rose and bowed to both tables, and walked from the room. His companion, snatching a last piece of fruit from the dessert plate, followed reluctantly. The etymologist was on a piece of torta cake and Knox ate his cheese.

She had her back to him. Turning, she said sharply in his ear, “Have you found any unusual native expressions since you’ve come?”

Knox dropped a cheese-laden cracker. “I wouldn’t know one if I heard it.”

She made a sound akin to a disapproving sniff. “That is why I’m here,” she said in the precise tones of an annoyed teacher. “I wish to note the effect of substratum Indian language on the Spanish of the region.”

“Really,” Knox said. “I thought you were hunting insects.”

“I’m an etymologist, not an entomologist. I deal in words.”

“Ah?” This time he made himself sound interested. It was apparently all that the lady needed. Rising, she said, “Shall we take our coffee in the lounge? I’ll explain my work more fully. It’s really quite fascinating.”

Knox signaled the waiter. “The lady and I will take coffee in the lounge. Brandy?”

“Why—thank you.” She sounded surprised and—grateful.

“Brandy,” Knox ordered, and helped her from her chair. He could not have been more solicitous had she been ten years younger—he guessed her at his own age—and a good deal more attractive.

Not, he found, that she was unattractive. This first opportunity to get a close look at her revealed a good, solid base on which a beautician could work. Her face and nose were rather long, but the bone structure was good. Her eyes, which she revealed when she removed a pair of thick-lensed glasses, were deep blue, and her hair needed only a little care to be more than adequate. She had a nice, rich voice when she remembered that she was not lecturing. On the whole, he found her more entertaining than he had hoped.

After two brandies, four cigarettes, and a brief course in the local slang of the region, Knox asked, “Have you been on this study long?”

“Two weeks.” She fiddled with her glasses. “And very interesting, I might add. I—”

He cut her off with the offer of another cigarette. “Two weeks,” he said. “Then you knew that poor chap Curtis?”

“Not well, no. Did you, Mr.—?”

“Knox,” he supplied. “Paul Knox.”

“I’m Adele Fisher. Doctor Fisher. Not a medical doctor, so please don’t come to me if you get sick.” She tittered. It was apparently a private joke.

“No, I didn’t know him,” Knox said. “But I came here to find him.”

“Then you’re a detective.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I’m an insurance investigator.”

“I see.” She sounded as if she didn’t, really. Putting one elbow on her knee, she rested her chin in the palm of her hand and stared into space. She had the somewhat protuberant eyes of the nearsighted and Knox wondered if she was seeing anything without her glasses.

“He disappeared the day I got those recordings of the children … no, it was the day Mr. Marengo let me set up my tape recorder in his cantina. I got some very interesting recordings.” She paused to swallow the last of her second brandy. “Of course, they’ll need a good deal of editing before I can release them publicly.”

“And you saw Curtis that night?”

“I remember it distinctly. I had dinner on the veranda. Mr. Curtis had rented a small outboard from Pedro Salinas at the garage—a nice young boy, but too well-schooled to have much of the dialect. Mr. Curtis left the dock and went quite close to the island—Horsetail, not that horrible place beyond it—and then I lost him in the dusk.”

“Did he seem to be going to the other side of the island, or away from it?”

She thought carefully, as if attempting to recall the scene exactly in her mind. “Toward it,” she said finally.

“You didn’t hear Curtis say where he might be going?”

“No, but Pedro Salinas told the police that Curtis said he thought he would fish up the coast. That area was searched, of course.”

Knox was beginning to believe that she was no more than she claimed to be, that the vague hunch he had had when she first addressed him was not going to pay off. Then she reached abruptly for her brandy glass, struck her glasses so that they fell to the floor, moved her foot and stepped on the glasses. The crunch was quite distinct.

“Oh dear, how clumsy of me.” She looked nearsightedly up at him. “I’m so awkward without my glasses. But I dislike wearing them. I think they rather detract from a woman’s appearance, don’t you?”

“I find you charming with or without them,” Knox assured her.

“I have another pair in my cabin. Would you be so kind as to help me get them? I know I’d stumble alone.”

He rose promptly. “Of course.”

Knox took her arm to guide her. She did not seem to need much help, although once outside in the darkness he had to steer her sharply from a head-on collision with a flowering mimosa. She did not speak until they reached her door, where she stopped and fumbled at the catch of her over-the-shoulder bag. “Oh, dear.”

“May I?”

She handed him the bag. He dug through cigarettes and matches and a small radio-type tube, and finally found her key. He opened the door, returned the key to the bag and the bag to Adele Fisher, and then reached in for the light switch.

When the light flared up, she merely blinked, although the room had the appearance of having been used for a small rodeo. The chairs were overturned, their bottoms slashed; pictures were askew on the walls; the writing desk was open and papers were spread everywhere; and a tape recorder lay in pieces in the middle of the litter.

Knox steered her along the wall to the bedroom door where she bumbled in. He stood back and waited. She returned with a pair of glasses exactly like the others perched on her rather long but well-shaped nose. She stopped in the doorway.

“Oh! Who the damned—”

Knox listened in admiration. Etymologists apparently had access to many words; she knew the more violent ones of several languages.

She stopped suddenly as if remembering that she was not alone. “Excuse me. I—but this is terrible!”

Before he could find an answer, she had dropped to her knees beside the tape recorder and began counting from the scattered but intact rolls of tape. Knox thought he saw a flash of relief cross her strained features, but it was gone too quickly for him to be certain.

She rose and looked at him. “Did you have anything to do with this, Mr. Knox?”

“Good Lord, no! Why should I?”

His surprise was so obviously genuine that she flushed. “I—well, you’re a detective—”

“An insurance agent,” he said. “I assure you that if I had done this, I’d have been much neater.”

She looked at him as if seeing him fully for the first time. “Yes, I’m sure.” She looked about her again. “Oh, damn!”

“Is anything missing?”

“I don’t think so.”

Knox said, “But what could anyone have wanted in here? Surely you keep your money in the safe.”

“Oh, yes. It wasn’t money. If anything, it was my data they were after.”

Knox did not answer.

She was busily putting her tape recorder back into one piece, and in a short while she had deftly reassembled it. She sat down wearily.

“Mr. Knox, I don’t know anyone else to turn to. I know you’re working on a case, but would you consider taking on another?”

Knox lowered himself gently into a chair. “For what purpose?”

“Someone did this. I want to know who!”

“The police—” he began.

She cut him off sharply. “I don’t want the police—or anyone else—to know about this.” Her gaze met his squarely. “And if I become your client, you’ll have to respect my confidence.”

“I will anyway,” he assured her. “Please understand that I’m not a private detective as you think of one. I work for an insurance company and—”

“Even so, you’ve had more experience at this sort of thing than I, surely.”

“I suppose so.” The more he thought of this, the stranger it became. It just didn’t ring right, beginning with her stepping on her own glasses. “I’ll do what I can, but you must realize that Curtis takes priority.”

“I accept those terms.” She rose. “First, let’s make it look as though none of this happened.”

Together they straightened everything. He went toward the kitchen for a drink of water and she called, “There’s a bottle of Irish in the cupboard. Will you mix us a drink? I want to change.”

He mixed two, drank one himself, and mixed another. Taking the drinks, he returned to the living room and sat on the divan, staring broodingly at the repaired tape recorder.

She came out of the bedroom freshly showered and wearing an evening gown of jade green, cut very low in the back and not much higher in front. She had done things to her hair and put on make-up. Knox rose and held out her drink to her. She reached for it slowly, as though without her glasses she was definitely unsure of herself.

She sat beside him. Knox drank and looked and found it good. The leathery Doctor Fisher was no more. In her place, he saw a tall woman, a bit too slender, perhaps, but with a full sufficiency of figure to fill out the evening gown. Having no glasses to cover them, her eyes revealed a good deal, but none of it appeared to be academic.

“Very nice.” He drank half his drink. “Very nice, indeed.”

“I thought we might go to the casino later,” she murmured.

Knox went to the kitchen and brought back the bottle of Irish and a pitcher of ice. She looked approvingly as he set them down within easy reach. He said, “First, let’s talk about what happened here.”

“This wasn’t the first thing that’s happened since I came,” she said. She let Knox replenish her drink.

“This has happened before?”

“Not the same thing. It was the night after Mr. Curtis disappeared. There were just three of us here at the time—Senor Gomez, his shadow, and myself.” She took a deep swallow from her glass.

“I was coming from dinner,” she said. “It was dark. There was a piece of moon but not enough to be of help. As I stepped to my door, one of the shadows moved.” Her eyes widened with the memory and she shuddered delicately. “It was quite frightening.”

“I can imagine.” Knox still wasn’t sure what was coming.

She had the rest of her drink and stared into the bottom of the glass as if to find inspiration there. “Frightening,” she repeated. “Especially when the shadow put its arms around me and a hand over my mouth. And, at the same time, kicked my door with its foot.”

“You say ‘it.’ Do you mean ‘he’?”

“Up to that moment,” she said with scientific precision, “I had no way of knowing what sex I was dealing with. But when I’m frightened, I panic. I’m quite strong for a woman. I kicked down with these spike heels and bit the hand over my mouth. I don’t think I did much harm, but my assailant made noises of pain and took away the hand.”

“Then?” Despite himself, Knox found he was growing interested. She held out her glass. He refilled it. She drank.

“Thank you. Then, just as I was gathering myself together to scream, I was kissed. And I knew the shadow was a man.”

“Mmm.”

“Mmm, indeed. Don’t you think I’ve been kissed, Mr. Knox?”

It was not a question Knox had considered up to now. He surveyed her gravely, and nodded. “More than once,” he said.

“And then some,” she said cryptically. “I felt his chin against mine. It had been shaved recently but hastily. I felt a few whiskers. And I smelled, but strongly, the same odor I had smelled on his hand. Now I was able to identify it.”

“Odor?” Had she brought in the subject of odor before? He reached for the bottle. It was strong Irish.

“Masculine odor—after-shave lotion. A very nice odor. Do you use after-shave lotion, Mr. Knox?”

“No.”

Leaning toward him, she placed her nose lightly against his cheek and sniffed delicately. “No lotion—but nice,” she said gravely. She leaned away. “This may not seem of importance, but it is.”

“I’m sure.”

“Since I do not respond to the kisses of every man who feels the inclination, I fought.”

“Immediately?”

She considered this to the bottom of her glass, and set it down. “No, but fairly quickly. I thought I might judge his size with my hands. As soon as I decided he was fairly small but solid and wiry, I fought.”

Knox blew out his breath slowly to keep from laughing.

“Very clever,” he said.

She looked sadly at her glass. “I’m afraid he mistook my motives and so I had to fight very hard. Before I could free myself completely, someone opened my door and ran away. Then I was thrust inside this room and the door was slammed on me. Thrust hard, I might add. I fell down.”

“And by the time you got back to the door, there was no one.”

“Of course not. But I investigated. And by sniffing unobtrusively, I found the one person who used that particular lotion.”

Knox filled both their glasses.

“Senor Gomez, the diplomat,” she said triumphantly.

Knox said, “Bravo,” and put her glass in her outstretched hand.