After a minute he untied the cutlass and walked toward the hotel, staying under the palms which fringed the beach. He could hear the launch moving toward the jetty. Albert was following orders.
He crept along the side of the hotel and found a window which gave him a view of the lobby. The pair were still playing cards. A sand crab scuttled across Johnny’s foot and he jumped. The cutlass ticked the building.
At the bar, McLain rolled his head. “Whazzat?”
“A manicou,” said the woman.
“Go look around the building.”
She closed her eyes a moment, then rose. Johnny crouched low as her bare feet slapped across the lobby. He reversed the cutlass and gripped it by the blade. He didn’t plan to kill the woman unless he had to.
A minute passed and the woman didn’t come. He straightened and saw the glow of her cigaret on the beach. She stood there smoking, looking out to sea. After a time she flipped away the cigaret, went back inside, and crawled up on her stool.
“A manicou,” she said, picking up her cards.
“You went all the way around?”
“Oui. As I do three times each night.”
McLain took a long drink. “Some night I’ll shoot that damn possum.”
The play continued. Between each hand, the woman filled McLain’s glass. He sagged lower in his stool and twice he dropped his cards. The third time he dropped them, the woman lifted the lantern off the hook, draped his arm over her shoulder, and struggled upstairs. The light reapeared in the third window from the front, then it dimmed slowly and went out.
Johnny stood up, feeling a tight band of pressure around his chest...
The woman screamed. A shrill note of terror descended abruptly to a choking gurgle.
Johnny dived under the gallery, his heart pounding. He heard bare feet cross the gallery. Then came a series of faint splashes as someone ran into the sea.
Ten minutes passed. Johnny heard only the sound of his own breathing and the soft whisper of the surf. He crawled from beneath the gallery, swearing under his breath. He found matches in the lobby and walked upstairs, knowing with a cold, certain anger what he’d find.
It was worse than he’d expected. He let one match burn down to his fingers and had to light another.
Howard McLain lay on the bed, arms and legs flung out in the posture of drunken sleep. His head lay several inches from his shoulders. The blade had passed through his neck and gashed deeply into the coconut straw mattress.
He found the woman on the other side of the bed. She’d just begun to undress; the red bandanna dress clung around her waist, glistening like wet soot in the matchlight. The cutlass had struck at the base of her neck and sliced down to the center of her chest. The taped handle still protruded from between her breasts.
It was the cutlass Albert had stolen from the deckhand.
Anger sickened Johnny. The stupid, kill-crazy kid. The man’s murder was messy, the woman’s was senseless. Both were needlessly brutal. Someone should hang for this, thought Johnny.
But he knew that if they caught Albert, they’d have a noose for him, too.
He walked slowly to the woman, careful not to step in the blood. He jerked the cutlass from her body and replaced it with the one he’d stolen in St. Vincent. He walked downstairs and out on the beach. He pulled the handkerchief off his head just in time.
When his violent retching ended, he swam twenty yards out in the water and dropped the cutlass. He swam further and discarded the jersey, the trousers, and the silk stocking.
He could see the faint light on the savanna. He swam toward it, but seemed to make no progress. No matter how hard he swam, the light moved away. Then he remembered the current. He shifted course and swam at right angles to it, not knowing where he’d hit the beach. Soon he didn’t care, just so he reached land.
It seemed an hour before his fingers touched sand and he pulled himself up on the beach. The darkness was absolute; he could barely see his feet. When he could walk, he made his way in the direction of the village by following the shifting, luminous line of the surf.
He knew he’d passed the hotel when he saw the light in the savanna, still nearly a quarter-mile away, but not visible from the hotel.
Suddenly he bumped into something warm and black. He threw out his hands and touched what felt like two large, soft breadfruits. A woman’s voice asked: “Ki sa chache, blanc?”
Johnny’s heart jumped, and he thought: She might have seen me leave the hotel. He slid his hands up to her bare shoulders toward her throat, and the woman laughed with the deep liquid sound of oil pouring from a jug.
“Man, you going the wrong way.”
Nearby someone else laughed. Another voice joined in, more distant. God, he couldn’t kill them all.
He dropped his arms and walked around the woman. “Pardon me,” he said.
“Parn’ me,” she repeated in a voice heavy with sarcasm.
A moment later he sidestepped another shape. “Vini, blanc.” said the woman. “Come.”
He walked on. The moon came out, revealing more people on the beach ahead of him. Never again would he wonder what people did at night on these small islands.
Then he thought: What the hell am I doing here? I must be in shock, walking around in a pair of shorts like it was Sunday afternoon at the beach.
He needed an alibi. And he suddenly wanted to know what the first woman had said in her broken French. It could have been something about the hotel.
He whirled and walked swiftly back. He found the woman sitting with her back against a coconut palm, her legs drawn up under a gray shapeless dress. In spite of the dress, Johnny decided she must be the one, because the beach was empty further on.
She didn’t look at him as he sat down beside her. But she moved her legs to make room.
“What was that you said before?” asked Johnny.
“I ask, ‘What you lookin’ for, white man?’ ” Her voice lacked the boldness of before. Johnny wondered if she was bold only in the darkness. Her round face looked almost adolescent in contrast to the obvious maturity of her body.
“Do you have the time?” he asked.
“No, ’sieur.”
He glanced at his watch and subtracted a half hour from its reading. “Nine o’clock. What’s your name?”
“Millicent.”
“And you wonder what I look for?”
She laughed softly. “I gave you a joke. I know why a man walks at night.” She stood up and pulled at her dress. “Come away from the beach. My small sister pass this way soon.”
An hour later Johnny strode onto the launch and pounded on the locked door of the cabin. Albert’s voice came from within, high and frightened. “Who is it?”
“Johnny.”
The door opened a crack. “Man, I began to wonder—”
Johnny kicked the door. Albert sprawled backward onto a bench, his mouth gaping. Johnny slammed the door and locked it. He turned to Albert and said softly, “I wondered too, kid.”
Albert looked at the locked door, then stared at Johnny’s face. His eyes were bright, his lips loose and wet. “I wanted to help, Chief. I thought you’d have trouble, so I swam out and sneaked in the back way and waited upstairs in the hall. When they came up I couldn’t stop—”
Johnny stepped forward and smashed his fist into Albert’s jaw. The kid fell sideways and lay like a bag of laundry. Johnny jerked him to his feet and hit him again. The kid sprawled face down on the floor.
“I want the truth, kid.” Johnny’s throat hurt as he tried to keep from shouting. He rolled the kid over with his foot. “The truth, kid.”
Albert twisted his head and spat a mouthful of blood on the deck. “Cantino said... make sure the job was done. I figured... do it myself...”