She turned her head slowly and stared at him with an expression that said he was a damned liar and an idiot for even trying to con her. Five years with the Company made you a veteran and she had had twelve of them. Maybe the Company wasn’t much now, but the political ax had only lopped off the heads that didn’t count; the heavy hands were right where they always were and the codes hadn’t changed a bit.
“Good for you,” she said. “I understand you’re living on Peolle.”
“Berger’s a smart little fat boy. I didn’t think he knew me.”
“He had memory training.”
Hooker nodded slowly. “I must be slipping. I forgot the Company keeps those outpost types in all the potential hot spots.”
“Yes,” she said meaningfully, “they do that.”
He got her intent and shrugged. He couldn’t give a damn what she thought anymore. Once, maybe, but not now. “How long you going to be around?” he asked her.
“Who knows? It’s only a minimum assignment anyway, and if I’m lucky I’ll get a week in the sun.”
“Try swimming off the side of your boat. There are some fish out there who would like to meet you.”
Chana finished her beer and put the stein down gently. She smiled up at Hooker and said softly, “Slob,” then turned and went back to Colbert and Berger looking as though she had just had a charming conversation, and sat down at their table.
Alley came up, his eyes going between Hooker and the table. “Who’s she?”
“Old friend.”
“Ho ho ho.”
He finished the beer off and handed the stein out for a refill. “I knew her back in the old days.”
“Like knew her how?”
“Quit being so nosy.”
“What else I got to do? Nothin’ goes on fire around here and if it does they piss it out. I can’t even use my expertise, like they say. So I’m nosy.” He handed a beer to Hooker and waited.
Finally Hooker said, “We had some business together.”
“Beddin’ down a broad is some business.” Alley grinned.
The look Hooker gave him turned the grin right off. “I don’t think they taught you much in the firehouse, pal, but if I was bedding her, as you say, I wouldn’t talk about it. But I will tell you this: one of those marks on my frame you find so fascinating, she put there.”
“Damn. Sorry, buddy.”
“Don’t sweat it.”
“What’re you gonna do with her?”
“Let her be, Alley. I just let her do her thing, whatever it is, and watch her sail away into the sunset. Maybe my luck will hold and she’ll get ‘et’ by that thing out there, though I doubt she could stay down in anything’s stomach.”
A small frown puckered Alley’s forehead. “You don’t believe that crap, do you?”
Hooker shrugged. “They made a movie once about a spider that ate Pittsburgh, didn’t they? Of course it’s crap.”
Alley snapped his fingers. “Hey... maybe that’s what they’re gonna do here?’
“Who?”
“That movie bunch that’s coming in and...” He stopped and squinted again, annoyed at himself.
“What are you talking about?”
Alley put Hooker between the table and himself, leaned forward on the bar and said, “Keep this quiet, but old fat boy got a call in here today and he took it on the wall phone at the end of the bar. What he didn’t know was that I was in the can. What I could hear on his end was something about a movie company coming in who was out taking pictures of the Arico Queen wreck.”
“Why would he care?”
“Hell, man, maybe he needs to stock up some trade goods in that general store of his. I don’t suppose a movie company hides what they do. Anyway, we could use some off-season money around here.”
Hooker shook his head. “Pal, you’re a one-man news broadcast.”
“Trying to be helpful. Not much to talk about these days.”
“And frankly, kiddo, I don’t give a hoot. That’s what I’m here for. Like they say, no news is good news.” He put his empty stein down and threw some change on the bar.
“Want another?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe you ought to send one back to the broad.”
“Order some.” He burped, slid his hand over his hair, picked up his cap and left.
When he was outside he walked up the walkway, turned left and followed it down to the dock. It had started off to be a good day, but it turned lousy real fast.
He let his mind drift back over the easy weeks of not knowing and not caring what was happening, then all of a sudden everything got spicy with boats gettin’ hit by something strange, then Chana Sterling turns up on the beach right next to his own personal island.
Silently, he cursed. The easy days were gone and he knew he was right back in the mess again whether he wanted it or not. Something was happening and the Company was in the game with their top personnel, and there he was, supposedly out of everything but knowing he was in up to his ears.
He said, “Sheeeit.”
“Man who talk to himself say much, sar.”
Hooker almost jerked around, feeling his hand go for a gun that wasn’t there anymore. “Damn, Billy, you are a sneaky Pete.”
“You say I have sand in my foots, sar.”
“I thought you were going to call me by my front name.”
“Yes, I think on it vary hard, but something tell me Mr. Shark out there want me only to know him by that name. That okay, sar?”
“Sure, Billy, but you don’t think a fish cares what you call him, do you?”
“Them fish, he think. Oh, he sure think, all right. He think how he chop off the one you catch right behind the head. He think how he sees a foot dangle in the water and how he pinch him right off by the ankle.”
“He think about you, Billy?”
The big Carib grinned. The only way Hooker knew was because his teeth showed in the darkness. “All the time we think about each other, sar. I wait, he wait.”
“What for?”
“For when one of us does not think, sar.”
“Great,” Hooker said. He nodded toward the shadow at the dock. “You know that ship, Billy?”
“She named Tellig. Come here five, six times before you come. She U.S. ship.”
“How do you know?”
“We know.”
“What do they do?”
For a moment Billy Bright said nothing, then, with an invisible shrug that ended the discussion he said, “Funny things.”
Later he would ask him again. Later, he would get an answer. Hooker felt a twitch of irritation touch his shoulders. Too often the governments and bureaucracies got wrapped up in their own superiority. Because you lived in a state of seminudity and had a hooch on a sandy beach, you didn’t exist and could be totally ignored. Stupid. These islanders had their own ways, their own thoughts and could get their own answers.
“You ready to go home, Billy?”
“Yes, for sure, sar. This night has been very good to me.”
Hooker gave him a little meaningful grin.
“She still love you?”
His teeth flashed again. “Oh, yes.”
“How about you?”
“I love that girl hard and long, sar.”
“Is that a double entendre?”
“A what, sar?”
“Forget it.”
Chapter Four
An hour before sunup Billy shook Hooker awake from a dream that had him clawing at an invisible something, and when his eyes opened there was a fine bead of sweat across his upper lip. This was another thing Billy found hard to understand: the mainlanders’ inability to sleep peacefully. All too often he had seen the movement in Hooker’s hands and he knew his boss was off in the night world, his fingers around a gun.
“Mr. Hooker, sar, it is time.”