Big Kiss-Off Read online

  “Go on. Hit me,” the Squid whispered.

  Cade raised the pistol in his hand, then held it level with his ear, as Sal opened the screen door of the kitchen and came over to where he and the Squid were standing. As tall a man as the Squid, outweighing him by fifty pounds, the swart-faced, aging Portuguese caught the Squid by one shoulder and turned him around as easily as if he were revolving a glass under one of the beer taps of his bar.

  When Sal was excited he ran his words together. His words ran together now.

  “Yougoddamnsneakingsonofabitchingqueer.” Sal’s massive chest labored in his anger. “Youandthatlouseofa-Tocko.” He fought for self-control. “Tocko saw Mamma whisper to me. Tocko guessed something was up and sent you to pry. Is that it?”

  The Squid looked like he was going to cry. “You stay out of this, Sal.”

  Sal lifted his hand, made a fist of it and moved it forward, more of a push than a blow. There was a dull thud as it struck the Squid’s jaw. He stood a moment weaving from side to side like the stack of a sea-going tug rolling in an offshore swell, then crumpled to the ground.

  Sal apologized sadly, “Am getting old. Was time I bust his goddamn jaw.”

  Inside the bar, a smooth tenor was singing Mathilda, Mathilda. Cade could smell sweet orange blossoms spiced with the pungent scent of garlic and olive oil wafting out of the kitchen door. The starlight seemed somehow brighter. On the far bank of the river, the first white rays of the moon began to appear over the oyster camps.

  Cade returned the gun to his pocket. “Thanks.”

  Sal shrugged. “Is nothing.” His booming voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Mamma is saying you need gas. I got plenty of gas. You can have all you want for nothing.” He took off his beer-spotted white apron and laid it on a tier of empty cases. “You come along with Sal. I get my boat and guide you where it is.”

  As an afterthought, the big Portuguese extended his other hand and pressed the full bottle of orange wine he’d been holding on Cade. “But before, up with the bottle. Mamma is saying you look like you need a drink.”

  The iced bottle felt cold and good in Cade’s hand. He wanted to grin and laugh at the same time. It was as if an unbearable weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He uncorked the bottle and drank. “Looking at you, Sal.”

  “Your health,” Sal said, soberly.

  10 Water Baby

  During the morning it rained. Afternoon was hot, with only a vague suspicion of clouds in a blatantly brassy sky. Except for the distant smoke of a freighter, hull down on the horizon for Tampa, or possibly Martinique or Honduras, as far as Cade could see there was nothing but the undulating sheet of green glass being split by the prow of the cruiser and whipped into a frothy white wake by the powerful churning of the twin screws.

  He’d bought a good boat. It pleased him. If he held the speed at which he was traveling, he should raise Grand Terre Island and Grand Pass by mid-afternoon and the acreage on Barataria Bay by early evening.

  It had been Sal’s idea that Cade ride out the night at anchor. He was glad now that he had. The Gulf was capricious, not to be dealt with lightly. A man needed all his senses. Cade had been born on the water. He had no fear of it. He did have a deep respect. The sharks and the crabs had grown fat on Sunday sailors who treated the Gulf like a salt water mill pond. Great Spanish treasure armadas had tossed like chips on its surface and spilled their stolen gold from Padre Island to the Keys and the Channel of Yucatan.

  It was a few minutes of one when, her hair tied in a pony tail, Mimi thrust her head out the open companionway door and smiled, “How you say, lunch is served?”

  “You just said it.”

  Mimi was pleased with her newly acquired phrase. “Then come and get it. Or do you wish to eat on a tray?”

  Cade debated briefly. They were well out of the ship lanes. The scene with Janice and Moran was bound to be unpleasant. He had been beaten and framed and put upon. Mimi was the one bright spot in his return to Bay Parish. Instead of racing like mad to deliver her to another man, he might well enjoy her while he could. There were, it said in the book, other things in life besides sex. It said. Cade cut his motors. “No. Don’t bother. I’ll anchor.”

  Mimi’s smile widened. “Good. The food on a tray, she bobbles.”

  “Like you, honey,” Cade thought.

  When the cruiser lost seaway, Cade soaped his lead and tossed his line. They were in thirty fathoms of water, over good grouper bottom. It could be, he might fish for an hour after he and Mimi had eaten. A thick filet cut from a twenty- or thirty-pound red grouper would make a tasty main dish for supper.

  The anchor made fast, he rinsed his hands and ran his wet fingers through his hair. The galley looked, somehow, different. Mimi had the knack few women had of doing much with nothing. She’d managed to make the small table look attractive. The hot corned-beef hash and cold asparagus spears looked good. She’d even opened one of the untaxed bottles of tawny port that Sal had insisted on giving him.

  “I am good cook, no?” Mimi asked. Her laughter filled the cabin. “All I need is the can opener.”

  “It looks wonderful,” Cade said.

  The strain he’d felt with the girl was gone. The deep V of her borrowed white shirt still exposed the cream-colored tops of her round young breasts. The white pants were amply filled. He still wanted her. He couldn’t be male and not want her, but his sense of immediate need was gone. He felt as he had the first night when Mimi had stood semi-nude and dripping in the cabin of the Sea Bird. Mimi was a good kid. He liked her. Anything that eventuated, if anything ever did, would have to start with her. His black mood of the night before was gone. The world was still filled with good people, men who valued loyalty and friendship, women who were chaste. It was just that the few had ones like Janice and Moran and Tocko and the Squid who stood out by comparison.

  The simple meal finished, Cade carried two folding canvas chairs and the partly filled bottle of wine out into the open cockpit. His vague idea of fishing left him. It was good just to sit in the sun and talk to Mimi. She wanted to know how long it would be before they reached the place they were going.

  “Some time before dark,” Cade told her. “I stood fairly well out from the pass but there’s land right over there, just beyond the horizon. In an hour or so, I’ll have to cut my speed and start feeling my way through the mud lumps.”

  Mimi looked out over the green sheet of glass on which the cruiser was resting. “You are anxious to see this Janice?”

  Cade glanced at the girl sidewise. “Why should that interest you?”

  “I am a woman and curious.”

  “No. Not particularly,” Cade said. “Any affection I had for her is gone, I think. I’m more interested in finding out why I’m being pushed around, why she cleaned me out the way she has.”

  The expression puzzled Mimi. “Cleaned you out?”

  “Sold my property.”

  “Oh. This land where we are going is ver’ valuable?”

  “It hasn’t been for two hundred years.”

  “Then why does anyone want it?”

  Cade slid down in his chair and shielded his eyes from the sun with the stiff brim of his cap. “That’s what puzzles me. In fact I don’t get any part of the deal. She is supposed to have sold it to Tocko but according to that waitress in New Orleans, she and Moran have on a big deal of some kind, a deal that has to concern the property.” Cade sighed softly. “Then there’s Joe Laval.”

  “The man killed on your boat?”

  He nodded. “According to Mamma Salvatore and from what Sal told me last night while we were refueling, it wasn’t Tocko who killed Joe or had him killed. Joe was too valuable a stooge.”

  “Stooge?”

  “A cat’s-paw, to pull a Slavonian monkey’s chestnuts out of the fire.”

  Mimi clapped her hands. “I ’ave read about that. It ’appened in Mr. Aesop.”

  Cade’s smile was wry. “Also in Bay Parish.”

&
nbsp; A nagging something in the back of his mind continued to annoy him, as it had at intervals since he’d discovered Joe’s body. It was something he’d seen or heard afterward, just before he’d pushed off for New Orleans.

  Mimi reached across the space that separated the two chairs and laid her hand on his. “You are so serious.”

  Cade looked at the small fingers resting on the back of his tanned hand. “Murder is a serious affair, especially when your name is signed to the tab.” He reversed the position of their hands. “Now you’ve asked me a lot of questions. Let me ask you one.”

  Mimi eyed him suspiciously. “What?”

  “You’re pretty anxious to reach Moran, aren’t you?”

  “He is my ’usban’.”

  “Currently playing house with my former wife.”

  “Playing house?”

  “Sleeping in the same bed.”

  “But thees we do not know. The nice girl who waited on our table in the restaurant in the hotel said they seemed to be business partners.”

  “During the hours she saw them.”

  Mimi looked out at the calm green water and said nothing.

  Cade played with the fingers under his. “What if you find out Moran pulled a fast one?”

  “How you mean?”

  “What if you aren’t legally married?”

  Mimi’s laughter filled the cockpit of the boat. “Ha. Before I let Jeem touch me,” she lowered her eyes to the deck, “you know how I mean — ”

  “Yeah,” Cade said, shortly. “I know how you mean.”

  Mimi continued, “At home in Caracas I am insist we go to the priest an’ also the registrar, an’ I have the papers to prove it.”

  The sun was hot and intimate. The only motion was the gentle rise and fall of the cruiser on the almost imperceotible swells. It was as if they were alone in the world, a world composed of sky and green sea water. This, too, had been one of Cade’s dreams. He continued to play with Mimi’s fingers. “Sure. I figured that. But that wouldn’t mean a thing if Moran was already married when he married you.”

  Mimi clung to her faith. “Jeem would not do such a theeng.”

  “Then why hasn’t he answered your letters?”

  “Thees I do not know.”

  “Why didn’t he send for you?”

  “I do not know thees either.”

  “But what if I’m right? Then what are you going to do?”

  “What if you are right about what?”

  “About you and Moran not being legally married.”

  Mimi’s breasts rose with her emotion until they threatened to pop the already strained top button of her borrowed shirt. “Now I ’ave come thees far I will, how you say, cross that bridge when I am come to eet.”

  Again Cade was tempted to tell her what Miss Spence had told him; again he resisted the temptation. The chances were Mimi wouldn’t believe him. She would think he was making it up, hoping to make time on his own.

  The semi-tropical sun beating down on the open cockpit was beginning to make Cade’s head ache. Sweat beaded on his face and trickled down his sides. He wished he was in, not on the water. Still, the gentle rise and fall of the cruiser gave him a pleasant feeling. At least one of his dreams had come true. He had a good boat. Perhaps that was as much as a man could expect.

  Janice’s sale of the old house made sense. Money was all-important to Janice. He could see that now. Janice would sell anything she owned, including herself, if the buyer met her price. But if she had sold the acreage to Tocko, where did Moran come in, and why was she building a fishing lodge on property she no longer owned?

  Mimi extracted her hand from under his. “How long were you married to thees Janice?”

  “About five years.”

  “She is pretty?”

  “Very.”

  “Weeth nice body?”

  “Very nice.”

  “So nice as mine?”

  Cade attempted to eye the girl beside him dispassionately. “I’d say as far as curves and hollows are concerned you’re very similar.”

  “You were colonel when you were married?”

  “Yeah. I was upped from major in the South Pacific, before I was transferred to jets.”

  “You were happy weeth her?”

  Cade wondered what Mimi was getting at. “At least, I thought I was. Yeah. Sure. We got along fine until I was sent to Korea.”

  “Where you were shot down?”

  Cade’s eyes hardened as he thought of Joe Laval’s welcome. “A big-shot colonel, eh? A hero. Or maybe not such a hero. While the other men you went over with were still dog-fighting all over Mig Alley, you were sitting it out on the ground, shot down over the Yalu.”

  It had been a hell of a thing for Laval to say. He was glad the lean Cajun bastard was dead. Not every man could be an ace. You had to play the cards as they fell. For every big-shot jet jockey there were a hundred capable pilots who risked their lives hourly without any fanfare or newspaper publicity.

  “Over the Yalu,” Cade said sourly. “On my fourth mission.”

  “She thought you were dead?”

  “Anyway, missing in action.”

  “And while you were prisoner, she got the divorce?”

  “That’s the way it happened.”

  All Mimi’s gestures were emphatic. She shook her black curls. “No.”

  “No what?”

  Mimi leaned forward in her chair. “Thees woman not love you. All the time you thought you were happy, she was jus’ sleeping weeth the silver maple leaves on your shoulders.”

  Cade looked at Mimi, then away. He could smell the natural perfume of her body. Her young flesh looked soft and warm and inviting. He had been hungry for two years. “Could be,” he said, sourly. “But isn’t that rather dog in the manger?”

  “Dog in the manger?” Mimi puzzled.

  Cade’s headache increased. The glare of the sun on the water hurt his eyes. He stood up abruptly. “Skip it. But if you ever get back to Caracas, look it up in your copy of Aesop.”

  He stood staring over the side of the boat. The green water looked inviting. “How well do you swim?” he asked Mimi.

  She stopped looking puzzled and smiled. “Ver’ well. Madre mia used to call me her water baby.”

  Cade’s sour mood continued. He didn’t care what Mimi’s mother had called her. He didn’t care why Janice had married him. What he wanted was a woman in his arms and a mattress under the woman. He lighted a cigarette, took two quick puffs, then tossed it overside and searched the wheel locker for the two pairs of cheap swim trunks he’d purchased in Corpus Christi. One of them was red, the other yellow. He held out the yellow pair to Mimi. “Okay. Then let’s go for a swim before we start on again.”

  Mimi’s smile turned uncertain. “I would like to, ver’ much.” She shook her head. “But thees I could not do.”

  “Why not?”

  She touched her breasts with naive candor. “Because up here I would be bare. I do not have something to wear, how you say, topside.”

  “Wear your bra or a towel.”

  Still dubious, Mimi accepted the yellow trunks. Her big eyes searched Cade’s face. “It — will be all right?”

  “Of course,” Cade said.

  Mimi patted his arm. “Of course. Forgive me that I ask.”

  She carried the shorts to the forecabin. Cade made certain that the anchor was fast and that there was a secured rope dangling overside. Then, slipping into the red trunks, he used the transom of the cruiser for a diving board.

  The water was cool, almost cold. Cade dove as deeply as he could, then fought his way even farther down. When he surfaced again, both his sense of immediate need and his headache were gone. He circled the boat in a fast crawl. The cool water and the physical exertion cleared his head. He felt good. He felt fine.

  He turned on his back and floated as Mimi climbed up on the transom. She made a pretty picture. She’d knotted one of the galley dish towels and fastened it with a safety pin
to form an attractive halter. The yellow trunks were much shorter and tighter on her than the red trunks were on him. Cade was proud of himself. If he got Mimi to Barataria Bay unharmed, Colonel Cade Cain could recommend civilian Cade Cain for a medal, for forebearance above and beyond the call of nature.

  Mimi waved gaily, then cut the water in a perfect dive. She dove as well as she did everything else and she had no fear.

  They swam for half an hour, racing, up-ending, scrambling up the rope from time to time to use the front of the cruiser as a diving board.

  Cade had never felt more tranquil, more at peace. He was resting, floating on his back, when he saw the first dark cloud and realized the wind had begun to blow. There was a perceptible difference in the feel and the look of the water. He turned on his side and called, “We’d best get aboard and up anchor. It looks like we’re in for some wind.”

  Mimi nodded. “Whatever you say.”

  The cruiser was swinging gently now. The rope that had been dangling to starboard was hanging over the transom. Cade scrambled aboard and leaned down to help Mimi up. As she came up over the varnished wood, the knotted towel caught on the chrome burgee standard and the safety pin opened.

  The gesture was instinctive, normal, natural. Cade had taken alt he could. He pulled Mimi into his arms, his free hand cupping her young loveliness, his lips pressed to hers, as they stood straining together, dripping salt water on the deck plates.

  The words were a sob in Mimi’s throat. “No. We must not. Thees ees wrong.”

  Her fingers tangled in Cade’s wet hair, for a long moment she returned his frenzied kisses, every curve and contour of her young body throbbing with desire. Then she went suddenly limp in his arms. Her flesh was still firm but cold. The cheeks Cade were kissing were salty with tears. The eyes searching his face were big and black and hurt.

  She had asked if it would be all right. He had told her it would. Mimi had trusted him. She had even removed her knife.

  Cade forced himself to release her, recovered the knotted towel from the burgee standard. The pitch of the anchored boat was much more pronounced now. His voice was as thick as the rapidly gathering clouds.