“The man looked like a sick rat by the time I was through with him,” he agreed. “People are incredibly selfish and stupid, I find.”
Trump made sympathetic noises. “All the same...” He rubbed his bulbous little nose. “I wouldn’t have the guts to do what you did. I mean, do you know who Lyfeldt is?” Here Ronnie Trump checked himself, became more conspiratorial and confiding. “Or, rather, what he is?”
Bunting stared at him.
“Lyfeldt is a hit man.” Trump seemed boyishly excited. “I was in Las Vegas — oh, ten years ago. Selling toilet installations to one of those new hotel-casinos. Not to put too fine a point on it, old man, my clients were gangsters. They pointed Lyfeldt out to me. He works for... um... organized crime, as they say. Kills people.”
A bubble of gas jumped into Porter Bunting’s gullet. The pain, sharp and unexpected, quite unmanned him. And it was so cold out on that veranda.
Trump drained his glass and smacked his lips. “Not to worry, old chap. He’s not a homicidal maniac, you know. He only kills for money.”
Clearing his throat, Bunting said, “Nonsense.” There was a note of pleading in his voice.
“You know best,” Trump countered, in a tone conveying the exact opposite. “Lyfeldt’s an assassin, sure enough. You must have seen his name in the papers when that — you know — when that truckers’ union official vanished, Lyfeldt’s name was raised.”
Lips trembling, Bunting mumbled, “I’m not afraid. I have a certain standing. One word to the embassy here and I could have him deported.”
Trump stiffened and tapped his friend’s arm. “Lower your voice,” he suggested dryly. “Lyfeldt just came in.”
Porter Bunting craned around, a rabbit at bay. Lyfeldt stood at the far corner of the veranda. His face was in shadow but his whole stance was a glare. Bunting tried to assemble a placating smile but his facial muscles were stiff with dread. Lyfeldt stepped back into deeper shadow, retreating to the dining room, white suit gleaming fitfully. Like something underwater. That shark Bunting had seen while cruising in the Gulf of Mexico had had the same implicit menace.
Reading his friend’s expression, Ronnie Trump whistled shrilly. “Golly, you didn’t know who he was when you tore him off a strip. Well, never mind. Those super-tough characters find it quite amusing when somebody bullies ’em.”
“He... he didn’t look amused just now. Should I call the police, get protection?”
Trump pondered the idea. “Bad notion, old man. You know the police here — corrupt as billy-o, every man Jack. Lyfeldt’s probably got them all on his payroll.” Trump snapped his fingers. “Come to think of it, when I was here last year there was some talk about him buying the Minister of the Interior, to stay safe from extradition for that triple murder in Brooklyn. He’s been here ever since.”
Porter Bunting sat transfixed, like a stone statue of a jelly. “Could you—?” he croaked before his throat dried to muteness.
For an instant Trump looked startled, even hostile. Then he shrugged, mopped his brow, and was beaming again. “All right, I’m a neutral between you Yanks! I’ll have a word with Lyfeldt — is that what you want?”
A fervent nod, a ghastly approving smirk.
Trump brushed his hands together. “Right. Tell him it was a rush of blood to the head, a fit of nerves, normally you’re the most amiable bloke in the world — that style of thing?”
“I was wrong,” Bunting whispered. “Very, very wrong. Unpardonably rude. It’s the heat here. I wasn’t myself, not at all myself. Tell him, Ronnie. I’ll be delighted to apologize, but only if you can smooth the way.”
Trump became gloomy. “It can’t be done. I haven’t been introduced to Lyfeldt.”
Porter Bunting wanted to throttle him. “Special circumstances,” he croaked imploringly. “No need to stand on ceremony, we’re all—” What? All what? he asked himself wildly. “All strangers in a strange land. We should stick together.”
“He might buy it, I suppose,” Ronnie Trump observed dubiously. “Very well, you beetle straight up to your room and stay there. I’ll report progress in the morning. Don’t open your door until I knock — oh, five times.”
“The morning?”
“Well, I can’t rush into this baldheaded,” Trump reminded him a trifle stiffly. “I only call myself The Last Trump. There’s my missus and the little Trumps, you know — reg’lar bridge hand. I’ll wait till Lyfeldt’s finished dinner, stand him a few drinks before he turns in. Gradual approach, d’ye see?”
And he bustled away, flicking cigarette ash off the lapels of his deplorable chain-store safari jacket.
Bunting spent a bad three hours. The room was stifling, its air conditioner a rusted monument to vanished ease. Outside, insects chirped the same three notes endlessly, or made noises like broken glass cascading down concrete ramps. Little creatures died noisily at the hands of unthinkable, invisible predators and Porter Bunting could empathize with them to the final nerve flicker of desperation and lethal agony. There were birds, sounding like giant fingernails scraping acre-wide blackboards, that he found especially trying.
At 1:00 A.M. he could bear it no longer, and after no more than twenty minutes on the bedside phone he contacted the front desk. Mr. Trump? Oh, he had departed. But certainly, Mr. Trump. We all love Mr. Trump. He departed by taximeter-cabriolet to catch the midnight flight to El Salvador.
Porter Bunting was stung by a chip of plastic in crashing the receiver down. Perfidious Albion, damned gutless limeys! Trump had run out on him.
That was when Bunting heard the footfall in the corridor. Just one, then a creaking, almost breathing, not-quite-sound of furtive steps which stopped outside his door.
He rolled off the bed and, soundless on shoeless feet, scuttled to the window. A balcony ran the width of the Tropique’s second floor, and Bunting fled to it. Presently it occurred to him that the balcony opened on either end of the long corridor passing the bedrooms up there.
He stole past window after window, turned sharp right, opened a door with care — requiring thirty seconds to move it a couple of feet ajar — and peered along the corridor.
Immediately he felt sick. Lyfeldt was outside his door. The man wore a terry-cloth robe ending just below the knees, and his limbs looked unpleasantly gaunt and pallid, like an allegorical figure of Death.
As Bunting watched, Lyfeldt’s left hand came out, hovered tentatively and spiderlike before deciding against a knock. The hand rested for a while against the door panel, spiderlike again, as if trying to catch vibrations from within. His right hand remained pressed against his flank, grasping something chunky, with a long, cylindrical snout.
Even in the extremity of fear, Bunting felt a spark of excitement. The man actually had a silenced pistol! His heart bumped, then relief jolted through him as Lyfeldt shrugged and turned away.
And then Porter Bunting sneezed.
Flinching back into hiding, he heard Lyfeldt padding toward him. To his horror, Lyfeldt paused at the end of the corridor, close enough to touch. Bunting could smell the dampness of the man’s freshly washed hair.
Lyfeldt was peering down the stairs. Next he would turn to retrace his steps and see Bunting cowering beside the door leading to the balcony.
A devout coward, Porter Bunting never knew how he did it. Lumbering forward, with a shriek of mingled terror and trapped rage, he shoved Lyfeldt down the stairs. The man gasped and hurtled the first ten treads without touching them, struck the wall at the angle of the flight, and rolled and crashed to the bottom.
There was a long silence. Wincing at the expected shot, or the sight of Lyfeldt climbing back, Bunting peeped over the rail.