The Killer Touch (12 page)

“Hell.” He turned to Rolf. “You didn't have to kill him.”

“I know. I could have let him shoot you.”

“He wouldn't have killed me. I was about to—”

“Kill him yourself?” asked Rolf with a smile.

“Don't kick a dead horse,” said Burt. “We've been through that.” He turned to Ace, who seemed to have slumped lower in his chair. “You plan to do anything about this?”

Ace gave a shrug which had no effect on his face. He mumbled, “Charlie was hot-tempered. He shouldn't have gone for his gun. He lost the toss and I guess he paid for it.” He gazed up at Rolf with a vague appeal in his eyes. Burt thought of a gorilla caught in a trap. “But life goes on, don't it? What happens now?”

Rolf turned to Burt. “What happens, Burt?”

Here it was, on his back again.

“I'll take the body to St. Vincent, turn it over to the authorities. I'll need your boat.” He glared at Rolf, challenging him to bring his game into the open. “You'll have to give them a statement.”

Rolf nodded. “I know the rules, Sergeant.”

“Sergeant!” Ace blinked at Rolf. “You called him. Sergeant.”

“He's a detective in a jerkwater Florida town,” said Rolf. “No jurisdiction here, of course. But somebody has to take over in an emergency.” Rolf gazed out over the lagoon, where the Coleman lantern sent its white light across black water and picked out the plunging spray on the rocks. “We can't go until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow early,” said Burt, still puzzled by Rolf's cooperation. “I'll also take Joss and the boys, and Jata and Maudie.”

Rolf raised his brows. “Evacuating the island, Burt? Declaring martial law?”

“Just getting them out of the line of fire, Rolf. Any objections?”

“No, it's a good idea. See you in the morning.”

EIGHT

Burt didn't even consider trying to sleep. After throwing a blanket over the corpse, he sent Boris up to the tower to keep watch, then sat down at a table to guard the body. Joss tiptoed in a half-hour later to get a fresh bottle. Her eyes were bleared with sleep. She gave a small shriek when she saw the body, but calmed down as Burt told her what had happened.

“I'm surprised at myself,” she said, slumping into a chair. “I actually feel relieved. I'm not scared about what's going to happen, because it's already happened.”

“Maybe,” said Burt.

“I just wonder what it'll do to business. Isn't that crass of me?”

“You'll be snowed under, Joss, by the same kind of people who crowd and push and sweat when you carry a corpse out of an apartment, that gape through the windows of smashed trains and tour auto graveyards to see the blood on seat cushions. Pretty slimy types. You won't like them.”

She drummed the table absently with her fingers. “Maybe I'll close up. Wouldn't cost much to live if I didn't try to keep up facilities for guests. You could come whenever you want … and your wife, if you ever stop being too finicky to give a girl a chance.”

She rose suddenly and went behind the bar. She lifted out a bottle and shot him an inquiring look. “Something for your nerves, Burt?”

He shook his head, watching her fill a glass.

“That's right, you don't have any.” She tipped the glass and drained it as though it were water and she'd just come off the desert. She filled another glass and carried it back to the table with the bottle. Four drinks later she laid her head on her arms and began snoring. Burt sat and listened to the boom of the surf. The light dimmed; he lifted the Coleman lantern off a nail and pumped it full of air. When he finished, he saw three huge gray rats tearing at the blanket which covered the body. He routed them and saw two more peering over the edge of the platform, twitching their whiskers. He stamped his feet and they disappeared. Another approached the body from the kitchen, moving in a humped shuffle. He launched a kick which sent it scurrying, but there were more squeaks and chitters from the thatched roof overhead. He looked up and saw a half-dozen tails hanging down from the rafters. They know, he thought, the yellow-toothed little bastards know death has come to the island. He lifted down the lantern and set it beside the body. Its upward glow filled the club with weird, looming shadows, but it kept the rats away.

Boris came in, sat down on the bench, and laid the long cutlass across his knees.

“Everybody asleep?” asked Burt.

“All cabins dark, sir. But I think nobody sleep in number three.”

“Oh?”

“The woman go there, meet the hairy man outside. Kiss-kiss. Go inside. Lights off. One hour ago.”

Burt frowned; he couldn't imagine that Bunny would risk Rolf's displeasure by sneaking off on her own. Maybe Rolf had thrown the woman to Ace to keep him quiet. Bunny was nothing if not adaptable.

“Watch the body,” said Burt, rising and stretching. “Don't let him bother you.”

Boris smiled thinly and touched the cutlass. “I had no fear when he living. Now he is out of it.”

Burt sat in the tower. Across the water came the distant sound of a dog barking idiotically, incessantly. Above him the stars sent down a frantic, coruscating brilliance. Below him the surf was a brilliant white snake which held the island in a triple coil, expanding and contracting. He smelled the sea and felt the rain washed breeze on his face. He perceived tranquility, but didn't feel it. Something evil was slithering over the island; something worse than the rats, because it wore the body of a man.

“Burt, you up there?”

Burt jumped at the nearness of Rolf's voice. How had the man moved up so quietly?

“There's hardly room for two,” said Burt.

“What are you doing—” a soft, breathy grunt, and Rolf was over the parapet and kneeling beside him “—watching the stars?”

Burt kept taut despite the friendly sound of Rolf's voice. Only a yard away lay a five-hundred foot drop to the rocks.

Rolf looked up at the stars and drew a deep breath.

“They
are
beautiful tonight, sort of washed by the rain. Orion, Cassiopeia, the pale disc of Andromeda. We're looking out into time, Burt, six billion years into the past. You know how that makes me feel?” He went on without pausing. “It's all a game, isn't it?”

“Sometimes,” admitted Burt. “I feel that I'm also involved in the game, which means bound to follow the rules.”

“You play by the rules because you don't trust your own nature.”

“Does your master know you're out?”

Rolf laughed. “Satan? I wonder if you aren't right,” He chuckled softly, obviously pleased. “I came up to talk, Burt. Killing does that; it enlarges me, intensifies my senses.” He leaned forward. “Can't you feel the pygmies down below us? Their petty emotions boiling, their fears? Joss lying asleep in the club with her bottle beside her? Thinking of … what? Strange whirling shapes and curtain-calls she missed and men she didn't kiss. Old Jata with her door nailed shut against Damballa and a dozen other red-eyed beasts; her daughter twitching beside her, fighting those teenage chemicals with the brain of an eight-year-old …”

“How about Ace and Bunny?”

Rolf darted him an oblique look. “Sleeping the sleep of satiety, I suppose.” He paused. “I shouldn't be surprised that you know. You have your own spy network, haven't you?”

Burt grunted. “I thought you had her under better control. You disappoint me.”

“And you disappoint me for not understanding. Weren't you watching Ace at dinner? Of course you were. Jumpy, scared … wanting. There's a close correlation between fear and the sex urge. Look at wartime illegitimacy—”

“So you threw him Bunny.”

“He'd have grabbed her anyway. Islands have that effect on people, Burt. You tend to think of direct solutions to your problems. Look at Joss. She wants a man, she makes a blunt physical appeal. If that doesn't work, she offers booze, free meals, a pad. She uses what she has. Ace there. He's a man of violence. Lives by the gun. He wants a woman, he'll take her. A man gets in his way, kill him. Simple and very effective … on an island. Who'd have defended her? You, March?”

Burt sighed; he was tired of Rolf.

“It's all hypothetical.”

“Sure, because I didn't allow it to become real. Now Ace will awaken in a tranquil state, a little less afraid—”

“What's he afraid of?”

“Of you, now that he knows you're a cop. You represent society, and in his eyes that makes you bigger than you really are.” He laughed softly. “It also makes him more dangerous to you, since Ace destroys what he fears.”

“I suppose everyone tries—”

“I don't.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Everything.” Rolf laughed without humor. “And therefore nothing. Hostility surrounds me; there is nowhere to run. And so I don't run.”

“And your wife? What's she afraid of?”

Rolf looked narrowly at Burt. “You're very interested in Tracy. I wonder why.” When Burt said nothing, Rolf went on in a musing manner. “Actually, I don't know what Tracy's afraid of. Something, certainly, but I can't pin it down. I've never been able to reach her, which is why—” He broke off, then went on in an abrupt, businesslike voice: “I have to know if you're with me. Tonight.”

Burt felt his stomach tighten; he'd been expecting the question. “If I say yes, how will you be sure of me?”

“‘You'll be given a job to do. Kill Ace.”

Burt caught his breath then let it out slowly. “Why?” Rolf ignored the question. “You could do it your way. Get him cornered, box him in, taunt him until he makes a try at you. Then you cool him. Self-defense; I've seen other cops do it.” He laughed shortly. “You can't lose, March. Neither of us can.”

Burt forced down his anger; he wanted to learn more. “I want to know the rest of the deal. All of it.”

Rolf was silent a moment, then sighed. “All right. Briefly. It started with a
mordida
, a bribe. A cabinet minister in a small Latin-American country—you'll excuse me if I slip the specifics—was getting rich on pay-offs from foreign firms who wanted to do business there. I paid—several times—and I got to know him. He lived austerely by
politico
standards, only one mistress, one Cadillac, one mansion. What did he do with the money? I was curious, and I told Bunny to find out. But then came the revolution, the insurgents won concessions from the government, among which was the purge of the corrupt minister. He made a run for it and got himself cut down by machine-gun fire. Bunny had learned only one thing; the country's ambassador to the U.S. was his closest friend. The ambassador also got caught in the purge, but he claimed asylum and holed up in a beach villa on Florida's east coast. Bunny and I returned to the States, where she met the ambassador and—in the direct manner of hers—quickly insinuated herself into his favor. It took her a year to learn his secret; not an easy year, either. The man was a greasy troll with the manners of a swamp rat. The minister had been converting his loot into diamonds and sending them to the ambassador in sealed diplomatic pouches. The diamonds were now in a strongbox locked in a safe in the villa. I had already begun building my organization. You may appreciate the way it was done, March. I went to a sleazy part of Miami, pretended to be rolling drunk, and flashed a few big bills. As I expected, three men followed and cornered me in a doorway. I'll never forget the surprised look on their faces when they realized that their victim had become an assailant. You see, I too had learned that one may kill legally in self-defense. I have left more than one unidentified body in alleys for the police to find. I killed one, leaving Hoke and Charlie alive. They were frightened, and since fear is the seed of loyalty—perhaps the only way to insure the loyalty of such men—I decided to use them. They led me to Ace Smith, who had just finished an eight-year sentence for armed robbery. I wanted to make the theft look like an ordinary burglary, you see, so that they'd never connect it with me. And to shorten the tale, I now have nearly a million dollars in diamonds.”

“Converting ice to cash is no easy trick.”

Rolf sighed. “March, this is my magnum opus, my greatest creation. Nothing is left to chance. Tomorrow night I shall meet two men from the ambassador's country. They will give me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in U.S. currency. I return the loot to its rightful owners—it's all arranged.”

Burt grunted. “Even the disappearance of Ace and Hoke.”

“Of course. That's why I chose this island. They expect the split to be made here. It will be, but only between you and me.”

“What about Bunny and your wife?”

Rolf made an impatient gesture with his hand. “You've asked enough questions, Burt. Are you with me—or against me?”

Burt suddenly felt the weight of two sleepless nights. He shook his head tiredly. “Rolf, you didn't read me well—”

“I read you. We could have made a natural team, if only you'd lost a few illusions.” He rose to his feet. “I'd like to give you more time, but you're beginning to distract me …”

Burt was startled to see the glint of the gun appear suddenly in Rolf's hand. Irrelevantly, he said, “I thought you didn't like guns.”

“I don't. They're too impersonal. But sometimes there's no choice.”

Burt felt his stomach cringe; the gun was pointed directly at his belt buckle. He talked quickly to gain time, watching for an opening.

“You have a choice, Rolf. Killing the man in the club can be called self-defense; stealing the ambassador's jewels could probably be fixed, since they were obtained illegally in the first place. No need to add murder to your crimes.”

Rolf laughed softly. “Burt, I was saving the news until you were committed to my side. Bunny killed the ambassador as she left his bed and board. There's a nationwide alarm from the FBI on down. One more murder won't matter—”