Johnny grimaced. The kid was a crepe-hanger, probably giggled at funerals.
For an hour the hotel stood as quiet as a bar on Election Day. Then a woman came out and walked across the narrow beach. Her features looked European, but she walked like a West Indian, with shoulders back and pelvis thrust forward. Beneath a white terrycloth robe her legs were a light toasted brown.
Johnny pegged her tentatively as a Creole from Martinique.
At the water she dropped the robe, stood for a moment while the sun bounced off her bright orange bikini, then ran into the surf with a squeal that reached Johnny as the squeak of a very small mouse. He wondered whether she lived in the hotel or only worked there; either way, she’d complicate the operation. He’d hoped to find the man alone.
Fifteen minutes later the woman came out, peeled off her bathing cap, and shook down a two-foot cascade of black hair. Johnny caught his breath as the peeling continued. The bra dropped to the sand; the pants joined them, following a downward jerk of her hands and a convulsion of her lips.
As she toweled herself with the robe, Johnny wondered why she’d even bothered with the bikini. Maybe bikinis were an island status symbol, as mink coats were at home. She was mighty go-to-hell about her nudity, the way she tossed the robe over one shoulder and sauntered up the steps into the hotel.
But there was no sign of the man he’d come to kill. Johnny ate his bully beef and biscuit without lowering the glasses. The day crawled into afternoon and the island curled up in the sun and slept.
Around two, Albert examined Johnny’s cutlass and said it would not cut an overripe mango. Johnny told him to sharpen it. For the next hour, the screech of the file slowly tied his nerves in a knot.
Finally he lowered the glasses. “I don’t aim to shave him, kid.”
“Man, you could.” Albert brushed the blade lightly over his forearm, leaving a patch bare of hair. He grinned. “Where you figure to cut him?”
Johnny raised the glasses. “You don’t plan that close, kid.”
“You wouldn’t let me...?”
“Hell, no. You’d louse it up.”
“Noooo, man—”
“Shut up.” A man in shorts had stepped out on the gallery. A bushy R.A.F. moustache curled back against hollow cheeks, and red blotches marred his features. But the large wet eyes and curly hair marked him as Howard McLain.
He slumped into a rattan chair, propped his feet on the railing, and raised a glass of something which looked like black Martinique rum. Johnny had drunk it once; nearly 150-proof, the stuff had gone down like velvet embedded with fishhooks. Howard McLain was drinking it like Pepsi-Cola.
Two more years, thought Johnny, and I wouldn’t have had to kill him.
The woman came out and sat down. She wore a red dress made of bandannas. Sitting beside McLain, she looked less European than she had on the beach. She lit a cigaret and held it out to McLain. He took a drag and returned it, absently caressing her leg. Their movements had a dreamy lassitude which to Johnny was unmistakeable; they’d, just gotten out of bed.
Well, that made it rough. No doubt they slept together at night. He felt a surge of sympathy for the dark-blonde woman coming four thousand miles to join her husband.
Johnny turned the glasses to the main village, marked by a wooden jetty which pointed a long finger into the bay. An unfinished schooner lay on the grassy savannah, its ribs bleaching in the sun like bones of a giant whale. Behind the savannah stood two stores, three rum-shops, and a square, concrete building which looked new.
A word above the door made Johnny’s heart stop: POLICE.
“Albert,” he said tightly, “why didn’t you say there were cops here?”
“What?” Albert grabbed the glasses and looked. “God, that’s something new. I swear, I don’t know.” He turned to Johnny, his face worried. “What does that mean? You can’t do the job?”
Johnny smiled grimly and took the glasses. “Means we have to be twice as careful, that’s all.”
A quarter-hour later, a young negro policeman left the little building and walked across the savannah. He wore a white pith helmet and a short-sleeved white jacket with corporal’s stripes on the sleeves. Near the unfinished schooner, he sat down on a fallen palm trunk, lit a cigaret and took off the helmet. Two of the workmen joined him and they talked, laughing often. The policeman unbuttoned his jacket.
“I think he’s the only one here,” said Johnny.
“How do you know?” asked Albert, who’d been breathing down his neck.
“No cop gets that friendly with the citizens unless he’s the only one in town.”
The corporal finished his cigaret and returned to his building. At five, he locked the door and walked down a sandy path toward the rear of the village. Johnny sighed. Now, if nothing happened to stir him up...
The sun dropped into the Caribbean. Darkness came like a blanket thrown over the island. Dim lights appeared in the rumshops and someone lit an oil lamp in the savannah.
Johnny watched the hotel, where Howard McLain and the creole woman sat playing cards across a bar of split bamboo. A Coleman lantern enclosed them in a cone of light. They didn’t talk; just laid down the cards and picked them up in pairs, counted the score and dealt again. The game, Johnny decided, was Concentration.
He hoped they’d go to bed before the moon came up. But he couldn’t wait much longer.
Albert came out with a plate of food and Johnny waved it away. He’d never been able to keep food on his stomach before a hit. I’ll get ulcers, he thought, if I stay in this business.
The two were still playing cards when the luminous dial of Johnny’s watch showed eight p.m. He went into the cabin and started pulling on his dark clothes. “I’ll swim to the hotel, Albert. Gotta make it before moonrise. Give me time to reach the beach, then go in and tie up at the jetty.”
“What? They’ll see me.”
“They’ve been seeing us, kid. Ten to one the cop’s got a description of the boat. If you stay out here, someone’s bound to remember we were here at the time of the killing. The cop’ll start looking for us. So you go in and mingle. Tell the people you’re working for an American businessman. Tell ’em I’m on board asleep, and we’re heading back to St. Vincent when I wake up.”
“Sounds good.”
“It stinks.” Johnny jerked off his shoes and socks. “Too damn many complications. I like to pick the time and the method. This time they did all that for me.”
The kid was silent as Johnny slid the cutlass into one of the black stockings. “Hey. How’ll you get back on the boat?”
“Swim. I’ll shed these clothes, so if I’m seen, I’ll just be taking a dip. Here. Tie this on.” He turned to let Albert tie the cutlass to his back. One thong went around his neck, the other around his waist. The blade lay flat along his spine.
“If it goes right,” said Johnny as he pulled the other stocking over his head, “we’ll be in St. Vincent before they find the body.”
“What about the guy’s wife?”
Johnny felt a twinge of annoyance. He didn’t want to think about the woman. “Don’t worry about her. We’ll be back in Trinidad before she catches her plane.”
He walked out on deck and eased himself over the side. In the water he paused, clinging to the splashboard. “We’ll make it, kid. Just keep doing as you’re told.”
He pushed off and swam toward the two dim squares of light which marked the hotel windows. After a minute, he noticed that the lights kept moving to the right. A powerful current was sweeping him toward the open sea. He altered course and aimed for a point halfway between the village and the hotel. He was not a strong swimmer and the clothes hampered his movement. He reached shore a hundred yards beyond the hotel, then dropped to the sand and drew in great gulps of air.