The Scarred Man (15 page)

    

    

    Her suggestion would have, as they say, made a dead Indian jump. The wheel had come almost full circle. This was the dream trip I had planned with Stacey. Suddenly I was aware of emotions that I had not expected to feel again. I was experiencing a very strong physical drive toward her unlike anything I had known since Stacey's death. At the same time, there was also a touch of guilt. I was dedicated to revenge, not pleasure. But what if the pleasure were part of the revenge?… In any case I was probably jumping the gun. She was a strange girl. Her directness was disarming. She had crewed on ocean racers and obviously knew how to keep her distance. But that was not the major consideration. Could she or would she lead me to Skid? Or was she deliberately laying a false trail to lead me away from him? Even if that were so, I still had to go along with it. She was the only clue I had. With Mary Caldwell gone, I wouldn't know where in the world to look for him.

    I had to trust her. As yet, she had given me no reason not to. The problem would come later when I might have to distrust myself. If I allowed myself to grow fond of Mary Caldwell, how could I then bring myself to kill her brother? It was a neat problem.

    "Well?" she said.

    "Okay. Fine. Let's go."

    "When?"

    "I'll need a couple of days to stock the boat. Say the day after tomorrow?"

    "Good."

    "Dinner tonight?"

    "Uh-uh," she said smiling. "We'll be seeing enough of each other once we cast off. Let's save a few surprises. I'll be here on the dock Thursday morning at nine. That suit you?"

    "It suits me," I said.

    

    

    She was at the dock on schedule. She was barefoot and wore blue jeans and a foul weather jacket. She carried a small canvas sailbag slung over one shoulder. I have always admired women who travel light. Mary Caldwell was a master at it. Her hair was drawn back into two pigtails, and her tanned face was fresh and gleaming. She paid off the cab and trotted down the length of the pier. Heads turned to follow her progress.

    "Well, skipper?" she said with a smile.

    "Come aboard."

    She leaped lightly onto the foredeck and deposited her bag in the cockpit.

    "Ready for sea?" she asked.

    "Just about. Care to inspect the stores?"

    "I'm not a great eater. Anything from beans to baloney will do me nicely."

    "We can do better than that. Bread, butter, eggs, fruit, canned ham, tuna, whiskey, gin, cigarettes-the lot. We've ice enough for three days, and I figure we can pick up the rest of what we need in Nassau."

    She looked at the masthead wind indicator and said, "That easterly is right on the nose. Were you planning to enter the Banks at Gun Cay?"

    "I thought we might, but if we find we can't lay the course, we'll go north of Bimini and around Great Isaac."

    "What's the forecast?"

    "East-southeast ten to fifteen knots, seas four to six feet. Okay with you?"

    "I've been out there in much worse. Want me to stand by the lines?"

    "I've just put the kettle on for coffee. Let me show you where to stow your gear, and then we'll have a mug for the road. You can take one of the vee bunks up forward. I'll sack out in the main cabin. That way there will be a door between us, and you can have some privacy."

    She nodded and took her bag up to the forward compartment. We had our coffee, and I cranked up the diesel and checked the exhaust to make sure the cooling water was pumping properly. When I had done that, I signaled to her to let go the lines;
Corazon
swung around, and we headed down the channel toward the open seas.

    The first heavy swells caught us when we were still between the jetties and the ketch began to roll heavily, throwing water from her curved bows. Mary balanced easily with one hand on the forestay. I watched her to see if she was experiencing any discomfort, but she was obviously an old hand, and I was satisfied that I would not be burdened with a seasick crew.

    There were, however, still a good many other unanswered questions on my mind. It had all gone too easily-the first contact with Red, his passing me on to Mary, now Mary helping to find Skid. It was almost as if it had been prearranged-as if they had been
waiting
for me. That was a startling thought. Had someone somehow picked up my trail and put together the sequence of events that had led to this voyage into the Bahamas?

    Why did I continue to feel that there was a great deal more to Mary Caldwell than had so far met my eye?

    I shook off the thought and concentrated on getting the ketch to sea. There was a heavy tide rip where the deep water swells met the three or four knot ebb tide, and it occurred to me that it might be a nasty spot to lose our power. As a precaution it would be well to get some sail on her.

    I signaled to Mary and she came back to the cockpit. Her face was wet with spray and her fair hair was blowing loose. She looked happy and relaxed.

    "Can you take the wheel while I set the main?"

    She nodded and settled down on the varnished wheel box. I waited a moment to see how she did, and when I saw that she had the boat under control, I slithered forward with one hand on the grab rail and began to hoist that towering cloud of white dacron. It was a slow process, but I finally got it up and sheeted home. We were too close to the wind for the sail to do us much good, but it was comforting to know it was there. If for any reason the diesel quit, we would have somewhere to go besides the rocks.

    Within minutes we were outside the jetties and in clear water. I got the number two jennie out of its bag, hanked it on, and pulled it up to the masthead. The motion of the ship changed. Under the driving power of that big headsail, she began to point up into the seas and make knots. When I was satisfied with the set of the sails, I went back to the cockpit and cut the engine. At once we began to experience the great pleasure of a yacht under sail in a press of wind.
Corazon
flew along, the log sometimes touching eight knots and for the most part averaging six. Fortunately, the wind had eased southerly a point or two which allowed us to lay a course due east to round Great Isaac light.

    I relieved Mary at the wheel. She went below and came back ten minutes later with a plate of sandwiches. I liked the fact that she had done it on her own without asking. When we had finished eating, she said, "You'll probably be up most of the night. Why don't you let me take the wheel now for an hour or two while you catch a nap?"

    "You don't mind?"

    "What's a crew for but to relieve the skipper?"

    I went below and stretched out on the bunk. Sunlight danced on the overhead, and I could hear the pounding of water along the hull.
Corazon
was groaning and creaking in the way of a ship under sail. The pleasure of putting out to sea in the company of a pretty girl was so overwhelming that for a moment I forgot what I was there for. But I was reminded a moment later when my eye was caught by something unusual in the varnished trim above the main bunk. I sat up to examine it. Beneath the gloss someone had written in very small inked letters, SS 9 02 72. SS. Stacey Shaw. Stacey had worked for hours on that trim and had left her mark.

    In the pleasure of the moment, I had almost forgotten her. It had taken that inked signature beneath the varnish to remind me.

    I got up and went out through the hatchway. The ketch was well on course and banging lustily through headseas, the log registering five to six knots. A big tanker looking like a block of apartment houses was hull down to the east. I watched him closely. He was probably moving at twenty knots or better on automatic pilot, and if he ran over us, he would hardly feel a bump. Very slowly, the angle of approach began to change, and I knew that he would clear us by a considerable margin.

    "Restless?" Mary asked.

    "A little."

    "It takes some getting accustomed to."

    I nodded. It had not been putting to sea that had made me restless; it had been Stacey's signature beneath the varnish. Was I feeling guilty then because with Mary Caldwell so close to me I had almost forgotten Stacey and the real purpose of my being out here? How long was I to be committed to the memory of a dead woman and to the destruction of those who had killed her? For as long as it took. Until the last of them was dead. Yet even as I said it, I knew that my resolve had weakened. I did not really want to face up to killing Mary Caldwell's brother. The old dilemma. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord…

    But yet, there is the eye for the eye and the tooth for the tooth.

    If only Mary Caldwell had not been so damnably attractive. If only she had not managed to pierce the shell of my coldness and resolve. In all these months of hunting, no one else had even gotten close to me. My determination had been my shield and my armor. I could feel all that resolution going down the drain. What I really wanted was to make love to Mary Caldwell. And then what? Present her with her kid brother's head on a plate?

    "I'll take over now," I said.

    She shifted to make room for me, and as she did so, her bare brown shoulder lay for a long moment against my chest. She made no move to draw away, and I knew that she was equally aware of the sexual electricity that was building between us. When she finally did move, her eyes were hooded, and her mouth wore a small, secret smile. It was almost as if she were telling me that I could take her then in the blazing sunshine on the spray-wet-deck. God knows I wanted to. I wanted to slake my long thirst in her soft brown flesh. But there was still Skid and still Stacey. I let the moment go by. Mary moved away from me. My hands were shaking as I took the wheel.

    She walked forward, balancing easily on the rolling deck, and lay down on the cabin top. She had unbuttoned her shirt, and now I saw her slither out of it so that she was bare from the waist up. I tried to concentrate on the compass and the speed log, but all my thoughts were up there with Mary. Why not just lash the wheel and go forward? I thought of that small soft mouth under mine. Those naked breasts which she had so readily exposed. A man would have to be an idiot to refuse that kind of an invitation. Yet it wasn't only the fact that she was Skid's sister that held me back. She had been almost too direct in her actions, too sure of her power over me. Certainly she was a highly sophisticated girl, and certainly in the age of the sexual revolution, one should not be surprised at the casual way in which women tumbled in and out of bed; yet there was a quality in her that puzzled me. Almost as if she were testing me. But for what?

    I drew in on the jib sheet to get the last half knot out of
Corazon
's forward motion. As I did so, a small plane came over the horizon from the west and headed directly for us. A Piper Cub, it looked like, with floats. The plane came in low and fast and swooped over us. An arm waved gaily, but the face of the pilot was invisible. Nosey little bastard, I thought. A whole bloody sky to play in, and he's got to come this far to invade our privacy. If Mary was disturbed by the plane she didn't show it; she made no effort to cover herself. The plane made one more pass over us and then skipped away to the east in the general direction of Bimini.

    The wind was slowly increasing. It had swung a touch more to the south, and if it continued in that direction it could indicate a cold front. If the front caught us in the Stream, it would mean a sudden shift to the north and a howling gale. I did not relish the thought of the short, choppy Gulf Stream seas under those conditions and only hoped we could make it across to Great Isaac in time.
Corazon
was plunging along at a fine clip, and if everything held, we should be snugged down at anchor by midnight.

    By eleven o'clock we had the hook down and were anchored in the lee of the island. A fat orange moon rode overhead. The candy-striped pencil of a lighthouse rose on the bluff behind us, and the blue-white finger of light flicked overhead. To the east lay the Great Bahama Bank-a flat plain more than one hundred miles long with a thin sheet of water over it. If we were to continue on across the banks,
Corazon
would have no more than twelve inches of water under her keel.

    I was tired from the long day of sun and wind. Mary had fixed sandwiches and drinks, and I studied her in the light of the oil lamp while she sat. across from me on the port settee. Her face was cold, remote, turned in upon itself. An awkward silence had settled between us. Was she angry because I had not made any move to make love to her?

    "What's he really like?" I said.

    "Who?"

    "Skid."

    She shrugged. "Just a kid. A little crazy sometimes, but then aren't we all. Why do you ask?"

    I muttered lamely, "Just curious, I suppose." The flatly negative quality of her answer had effectively stifled my attempt at conversation. With an abrupt gesture, she tossed off her drink and reached for the bottle. Her eyes looked strange in the lamplight, pupils distended. She had worn that strange look once before, the day I had come to the house. Did liquor affect her that way? It did not seem to me that she had drunk all that much. Perhaps she was on some sort of drug. The strange look in her eyes and the abrupt change of manner would seem to indicate it. Or was it only that she was unpredictable in her reactions and that in a peculiar way that was part of her attraction for me?

    I had the impression she was waiting for something. Above the keening of the wind in the shrouds, I heard the sound of a plane.

    My eyes were getting heavy. I lay down fully clothed on the settee and fell asleep.

    It may have been an hour or two that I slept. When I awoke and looked across at her she was still staring at nothing, eyes narrowed against the lamplight.