The Tahiti was primarily a swimming club and closed at sunset, although the second-class cafe next door stayed open all night. Pete walked around to the ocean side. A full moon lay on the horizon like an ivory cue ball on a pool table. He sat on the sand and listened to jukebox music coming faintly from far away.
Presently a girl walked between him and the moon. It was Karen. She moved slowly, and after she had passed he could still make out her figure on the beach. She went to the end of it and turned back, walking higher on the sand. When she came near enough he saw that she was carrying her straw mat.
She spread the mat on the edge of the terrace and sat down. He didn’t move, and for a full half-minute she did not move either. Then she raised her hand to smooth a straying lock of hair, and it was a gesture he had often seen Mary make when he’d first loved her and been watchful of the slightest of her gestures. Mary was dead, but this girl—
He rose silently, and stepped around to stand in front of her. She looked up, startled. He caught her wrists, pulled her up and kissed her on the mouth. He did not mean to frighten or to hurt her. She fought him savagely, and he let her go.
“Karen,” he said, “I only—”
“What’s the matter with you? I think you must be crazy!”
“Now, wait!” He tried to catch her wrists again. “Wait a minute!”
But she was no longer there. She was down near the water, running, stumbling away from him across the sand.
He was running after her. She heard him and went faster. “Wait, damn it!” he shouted. “Stop!” She did not stop. They ran past stacked deck chairs and piled-up beach umbrellas. The lights of a hotel were coming near. He saw her push inside.
8
His head was pounding when he returned to the Tahiti. She had left her beach mat on the terrace. He carried it to his car. He opened the luggage compartment, tossed in the mat and started to lower the top again. When it was halfway down he stopped, abruptly pushed it up. The moon lit up the interior of the compartment. He was shocked by what he saw inside.
A paper bag from which the necks of four whiskey bottles protruded. It was the Scotch he had accused Martin of stealing, and which he was sure he remembered putting in the closet of his kitchen. He did nothing for a count of five.
Then he carefully withdrew one bottle, opened it with the corkscrew which was an attachment of his pocketknife, and took a deep, long drink. He waited a quarter of a minute, then lifted the bottle to his lips again.
Pain thudded through his forehead at regular, short intervals. It was blinding. He took another drink and climbed behind the wheel.
Footsteps approached the car. “No work tonight, boy. Is Domingo — Sunday. Is pretty, no — the automóvil?”
It was Chucha. He didn’t look at her. He held the bottle on his lap.
“You got whiskey? I like whiskey. Is more better as tequila. We go for ride in automóvil, drink whiskey, have good time?”
“No.”
“No? You loco. Good girl, me.”
He turned his head. He saw her foggily, as through a reddish mist.
“Loco?”
“Oh, yes! Why we no go for ride?”
Someone said, “Get in the car.” It sounded like his voice.
The beach lobby was deserted when Karen entered the hotel. Already she had recovered from the shock that Pete had given her, and which, now that she’d had time to consider it, turned out not to have been such a great shock after all.
She wondered why she had reacted so violently. Pete Welles had kissed her but, after all, she had clowned around with him on the surfboard, and he probably had thought—
It made no difference what he thought. Next time she saw him she would be polite but, at first, a little distant. What might develop later would depend on how he took the arms-length treatment.
She took the elevator to the lobby at street level. The wide entrance to the bar was on the right. Fran was in there with her usual crowd of free-loaders. Andy stood on the outskirts of the group. His eyes met Karen’s, and she quickly turned away. She went outside and stood under the porte-cochere, facing the boulevard.
A Buick convertible drove past. Pete Welles was at the wheel. A woman sat beside him, but Karen couldn’t see her face. The convertible passed under a street lamp, went on into the darkness on the other side.
For no reason she could understand, Karen suddenly felt shaken and alone. She went back thoughtfully into the crowded lobby of the hotel.
The moon was no longer an ivory cue ball. It looked more like a shrunken lemon hung by invisible wires up in the sky. He lay on sand, and the lights of Acapulco glittered across water at least five miles away. He must have circled the bay and gone to sleep here on the beach. He had no recollection of anything that had happened since he’d found the whiskey. There was a bottle by his side.
His headache was gone, and he felt alert and hungry. He got lightly to his feet, brushed sand from his clothes and looked back at the road. The Buick was there. His ability to drive quite normally when he had been drinking had always amazed him. Carrying the bottle, he walked back to the car. The clock on the dashboard showed ten minutes after twelve.
At twenty-five to one he parked in front of a low, blue building loud with dance music. He left the convertible and went inside. In the crowded bar he found a vacant stool. He ordered Scotch and asked to see a menu.
A waiter came and Pete described the steak he wanted — very rare. Waiting for it, he sipped his whiskey and wondered what had happened to Chucha. It was curious, he thought, that until this moment he had forgotten having been with the waitress earlier that evening. Even now he couldn’t remember what they’d talked about, if they had talked...
9
A man at the end of the bar was staring at him with an odd expression. Pete recognized him: Andy Shultz. Andy’s expression was more difficult to place. It was too detached to be called hatred, but it was deeper than the instinctive dislike one human being might feel for another at first sight. Andy must have seen him at the Tahiti with Fran Garvey. The damn fool probably thought he was interested in Fran.
The waiter served his steak. It looked delicious, red under a thin layer of charred black. He cut off a corner and tasted it. Perfectly seasoned. He started to take another bite.
Then he noticed that the noisy chatter at the bar had suddenly been silenced. Everyone was looking toward the door. Four heavily armed policemen had come in. The head waiter was talking to them; he shrugged and spread his hands. It was an expressive gesture, indicating that he was helpless if the police insisted on coming further but that it would do no good and that he would appreciate it if they went away.
To Pete’s intense relief they nodded and backed out. He took a drink and listened to the exited murmur that swelled up.
A man said, “Same damn cops stopped me on the road a while ago.”
The woman beside him lit a cigarette. “What do you expect? When there’s a murder—”
“So what? Another Mexican girl gets knifed by her boy friend.”
“But this was a particularly brutal murder. They say the blood—”
The woman’s voice fell to an inaudible whisper. Pete stared at his plate of meat. It was nauseating. He pushed himself to his feet. Andy grinned at him as he went out.