"As if somebody had tried to break my back."
As he placed the coffee in front of her, Meyer said, "Thank me for that too. I stretched you out across a boat seat and I could feel your ribs give every time I pushed the air out of your lungs. But I was reasonably careful not to break any."
The morning light was brilliant against her face as she sat opposite me. Her dark hair was brushed to a gloss, hung free, two dark curved parentheses which framed the lovely oval of her face, swung forward as she dipped her head and lifted the cup to her lips. She had made up her mouth carefully with the lipstick from the convenience kit. The pale down on her face, just below the darker hair of the temples, grew quite long. There was one faint horizontal wrinkle across the middle of her forehead, twice arched to match the curve of her brows. And a slightly deeper horizontal line across her slender throat. A few pores were visible in the ivoried dusk of her skin where it was taut across the high solidity of oriental cheekbones, but there was no other mark or flaw upon her, except the cheekbone scar shaped like a star.
In that light the color of her eyes surprised me. Light shrunk the pupils small. The irises were not as dark as I had imagined. They were a strange yellow-brown, a curious shade, just a little darker than amber, and there were small green flecks near the pupils. Her upper lids had that fullness of the Asiatic strain, and near-death had smudged the flesh under her eyes. She looked across at me and accepted the appraisal with the same professional disinterest with which the model looks into the camera lens while they are taking light readings.
"And otherwise?" I asked.
She lifted her shoulders slightly, let them fall. "I slept fine. You men will have to fill in some blanks. Where are we?"
"Tied up at Thompson's Marina at Marathon."
"And last night, after I corked off, did you dear boys go honking and blustering over to the beer joints to make the big brag about what you rescued from the briny?"
Her voice was mild, but there was a curl to her lips.
Meyer smiled down at her. "I don't know how McGee reacts to that, my dear, but personally I find the inference offensive. How would you like how many eggs?"
"Uh... two. Easy over."
"With a little slab of sauteed fish? And a quarter of one of Homestead's better cantaloupes?"
"Yes.... Yes, please. Mr. Meyer?"
"Just Meyer."
"Okay. Meyer, I'm sorry I said that. It's just that I'm a little spooked."
"Forgiven," Meyer said. "We bluster, dear. We bluster all to hell and gone. But honk? Never!" Meyer served her, poured us both more coffee, then came and wedged in beside me with his own cup.
"I don't know how you saved me," she said. Meyer explained it all, how we happened to be there, what we saw and heard, and who had done what. As he explained, she ate with a delicately avid voracity, a mannerly greed, glancing up at Meyer and at me from time to time.
"McGee stayed down just long enough to make my blood run cold," Meyer said. "I know it was better than two minutes."
She looked at me, eyes narrowing slightly in a speculation I could not read. I said, "I knew you were alive when I got to you. So that was the only good chance I had to bring you up alive, to get you loose that first time."
"And you heard the car leave?"
"Before you touched bottom," I said.
Her plate was empty. She put her fork down with a little clink sound. "Then we three, right here, are the only people who know I'm alive. Right?"
"Right," said Meyer. "Our plans before you... uh, excuse me, dropped in... were to leave sometime this morning and head for Miami. Want to come along?"
She shrugged. "Why not?"
"My dear," Meyer said, "it would seem as if someone took a violent dislike to you last night."
"Is that a question?"
"Only if you want to give an answer. We are not going to pry. So you don't have to make up any answers. Tell us what you feel like telling us, or nothing at all."
"He... one of them-there were two-he didn't like it. He wished there was some way to get around it, so it wouldn't have to happen. But he knew and I knew we were way past any place where there was any chance of turning back. I was scared sick. Not of dying. When you take a chance and lose, that's the chance you take. What he didn't like most was being told not to make it easier. I-Ie didn't think that was right. And that's what had me so scared, going out the hard way. Being down in the water and no chance to do anything, and holding my breath down in the dark on the bottom as long as I could. I whispered to him, begging him to put me out first. He knows how. I thought he would. He could have done it so Ma... so the other one wouldn't even have heard. But then they stopped and as he swung me over, that wire hurting me terrible, and let me go, I knew he wasn't going to."
She stopped and gave us both a look of savage satisfaction. "I was taking a breath to scream my lungs out but then I knew that if I didn't make a sound, the other guy would think Terry had hit me on the throat before dumping me, and he'd have to report it, and they might give him a hard time. I sure owed him a hard time, so I didn't let myself make a squeak and it... I guess it took my mind off everything a little bit, and at least I ended up down there with a big hunk of air in my lungs instead of all screamed out. Funny, it could have made the difference."
"And probably did," Meyer said. "And it was why I thought someone was disposing of a dead body, the way you came down without a sound. A good thing Travis got down there quickly."
"Boy, if they ever find out somebody got me in time!"
I saw her shiver. It was a clue to her being more rattled than she would let herself show us. Her voice was at odds with her pale and dusky elegance. It was a rich, controlled contralto, but she switched back and fort" from the vulgarity of an artificial elegance of expression to a forthright crudeness. I could not tell whether it was spirit or stupidity that made her feel pleased with her own cleverness in giving Terry a hard time as she was, as far as she knew, being murdered.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise and said, "You know, I haven't even said thanks! Okay, thanks, guys. McGee, I say it took guts to go down there after me, and it was a nice thing to do for anybody. I don't remember much. Just all black and terrible, and then somebody pulling my hair and touching me, maybe a fish going to eat me. Then being in all that fish smell, and somebody pushing at me, and heaving up that water all over. So here I am. And thanks."
"You are most welcome," Meyer said. "And here you are, with a second life to lead. Everything since last night is pure profit. So what are you going to do with your new life?"
"I don't know! I haven't had to think of things like that. I've always been told what to do, and brother, I better do it. I don't want to have to think about what I should do." She bit her lip and looked at each of us in turn, head slightly tilted. "You boys look like you've got something going for you. I mean, this boat and all, and you have a lot of cool. It's not a fishing trip and back to the old lady and the office. If you've got something going, maybe there's some kind of way I could fit into things."