Big Kiss-Off Read online

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mimi held the towel in front of her. “I’m sorry, too,” she said, quietly. “So ver’ sorry. I weesh I could tell you how sorry.”

  Somehow dignified and regal despite the fact that all she had on was a pair of too tight yellow swim shorts, she turned and entered the cabin, closing the door gently behind her.

  Cade drained the nearly empty bottle of port he found rolling beside one of the canvas deck chairs. Then, eyeing the windblown clouds, he started his motor and up anchored, just as the first sheet of blinding rain drenched the bobbing cruiser.

  The Gulf was no longer green. It was a deepening rain-pocked purple. The swells grew even more pronounced. After setting his course, Cade glanced back. The triangular dorsal fin of a curious twenty-foot shark was crisscrossing the area in which he and Mimi had been swimming.

  It had been a foolish thing to do. A dozen things could have happened. It wasn’t his fault they hadn’t. Between lulls in the puffs of wind, he could hear Mimi crying in the cabin. Because he’d gone as far as he had? Because he hadn’t gone farther?

  Women.

  Cade opened the motor full throttle for the run to the big south mud lump and braced himself as the twin screws bit into the water.

  11 Home to Janice

  Cade glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes of eight. It would be dark in a few more minutes. The rain and wind had lasted less than an hour but left a vicious chop behind them. The run from the mouth of the pass had taken longer than he had thought it would. Now he was bucking an outgoing tide.

  In the deepening dusk the big south mud lump glided past to starboard. Cade cut his speed still more and swept the mud lump with his searchlight. The tide was full. Only portions of the lump were visible. The six men he had seen were gone, chum for the crabs and the fishes.

  It was tricky business running the mud lumps in the dark. Cade considered anchoring for the night and decided against it. Now he was this close, he wanted to get to the showdown with Janice right away. He wanted to get Mimi out of his hair. He didn’t want to spend another night aboard the boat with her.

  Her eyes swollen from crying, Mimi appeared in the doorway of the cabin. She was wearing the dress and hose and high-heeled shoes he had bought her in New Orleans. Her voice was as sullen as her eyes.

  “Do you want me to fix you something to eat?”

  Cade shook his head. “Don’t bother. We should be inside in another hour.” He felt impelled to hurt her. “Besides, I might be tempted to anchor.”

  In the faint glow from the red and green lights on the instrument panel, Mimi looked as if she were about to cry again. “I said I was sorry.”

  Cade felt as if he were shouting at her. “Okay. So we’re both sorry. If you’re hungry, fix something to eat. But don’t light any lights and stop bothering me or I’m apt to run us aground.”

  He cut the speed of the cruiser until he barely had seaway. The channel was narrow and tricky here, but once he was through Grand Pass he would be in open water again. Jean LaFitte, long ago, had anchored in the Bay. He had even maneuvered his barkentines and cutters through the narrow series of watercourses that helped drain the Mississippi at a point opposite New Orleans. LaFitte had used the inland route to bring his booty to the city.

  Mimi gnawed at her lower lip. “Well, don’t shout at me.”

  “I’m not shouting,” Cade shouted.

  He turned on his running lights, wishing to Christ he’d come into the Bay the short way. Still, if he’d cut through the series of watercourses instead of stopping at Bay Parish, he wouldn’t know he was wanted for murder. Even if he couldn’t do anything about it, it was always best for a man to know where he stood, especially with the law or a woman.

  Mimi remained in the doorway of the cabin. “How do you know where you’re going?”

  Cade tried to explain and couldn’t. A man could explain sailing on compass. But feeling his way through the dark was something else. It was like flying a jet. A man either could or he couldn’t. It was a combination of things, of having threaded the channel a hundred times before, the sound and the feel of the screws, the color of his wake, an occasional familiar landmark.

  “I’ve been here before,” he said. “How’s for breaking out another bottle of wine? As long as we’re about to see our respective mates, we ought to celebrate the occasion.”

  “Whatever you say,” Mimi said. She opened her mouth to say more, then changed her mind and disappeared into the cabin to reappear a few moments later with an opened bottle of the tawny port that Sal had given them.

  As she extended her hand with the bottle the cruiser scraped over a mud bar and Cade, instinctively, held his breath. When he could speak again, he said, “You first. Saludos.”

  “No, thank you,” Mimi said primly. “I nevair drink on the empty stomach.”

  Cade drank from the neck of the bottle. The wine tasted weak and insipid. He wished it was Jamaica rum. He wished he was roaring drunk. He wished Mimi was Janice or that he was James Moran. He could tell himself that Mimi meant nothing to him, that she was just another girl he’d met, but once she went out of this new life he was leading, he doubted if anything would ever be quite the same again. It was more than physical. He liked her.

  He took a second big drink, then corked the bottle. If only he’d met Mimi before she’d met Moran. But when Mimi had met Moran, he’d still been married to Janice. Or had he? Not that it made any difference.

  He was through the pass now, in deep water again. He could tell by the bite of the screws. There was no wind here, no swells, no chop. The Bay was a sheet of black glass, broken only by the white wake and the occasional phosphorescent slap of a leaping fish. Except for the purr of the motors and the throb of the underwater exhaust, the only sound was the crying of the startled birds roosting in the offshore islands.

  The Bay was huge and black and mysterious and somehow sinister, much as it must have been in the days of Jean LaFitte. Its population fluctuated. People came and people left. The moon was still entangled in the trees rising from the wooded shoreline. It was too dark to see, but Cade doubted if the Bay, at least this section of it had changed. Even if it were daylight, all he would be able to see would be a few crude fishing camps, the rare cabins of muskrat and wild rice hunters squatting along the watercourses leading inland.

  The thought amused Cade. It could be there were squatters on his land. Seven years of squatting established proprietary rights. If any of them cared to contest the sale the court might decide for them! It would serve Janice and Tocko right.

  The moon rose from the branches of the trees and seemed to spotlight the white cruiser. The night wind was cool on his cheek, like soft black velvet threaded with silver.

  As he rounded a vaguely familiar landmark, a spit of land, Mimi spoke for the first time since she had handed him the bottle. “You are ver’ good sailor.”

  “Thank you,” Cade said. He wished he hadn’t drunk the wine. It hadn’t helped. What he wanted didn’t come in bottles.

  “We are almost there?”

  Cade searched the moonlit shoreline. “I’d say we’re abreast of my property now, but it’s been some time since I’ve been here.” He located a pin prick of light. “That should be the camp dead ahead.”

  “There is a building?”

  “A shack. My father and I used it maybe three or four times a year.”

  “How many rooms in the shack?”

  “One.”

  Mimi wet her lips with her tongue. “Oh.”

  The pin prick of light brightened and became a shaded high-watt bulb outlining a substantial pier extending out into deep water. There was a fast-looking single-stack cutter tied to the pier and several smaller boats in the slips leading into it. Whatever use Janice had found for the acreage came under the head of big business.

  Cade warped the boat into an empty slip. The shack he and his father had built was gone, replaced by a substantial two-story log lodge with a half-doz
en small cottages flanking the main building. Back of the lodge he thought he could see a landing strip. Only the lodge was lighted.

  He cut his motors and made fast.

  “You said it was a shack,” Mimi pouted.

  “Yeah, it was,” Cade said.

  He started to step up on the pier and Mimi stopped him. “You are so anxious to see your Janice you are going ashore like that?”

  Cade ran his hands down his sides and realized he was still wearing the red swim shorts. They and his cap were all he had on.

  He put on his last clean shirt and white pants. The heavy .38 caliber pistol made an uncomfortable bulge in his hip pocket. Cade transferred it to his side pants pocket and slipped his bare feet into his sneakers. Mimi was waiting in the cockpit. He helped her up on the pier, then stepped ashore.

  The pier was new. The smell of freshly milled lumber and the reek of creosote was strong. The cross planks were laid but still had to be spiked. Cade stood, his cap on the back of his head looking up at the lighted lodge.

  Mimi was impatient with him. “For why are you waiting?”

  “Just wondering,” Cade told her.

  “Wondering what?”

  “If I’m walking into a trap.”

  He looked from the lighted lodge to the dark mat of vegetation rising back of the narrow beach. Seemingly, the pier and the beach were deserted. The only sounds he could hear were the whispering of the wind, the night noises in the swamp and the rhythmic thud thud of the gasoline power plant supplying the juice for the lights.

  “Trap?” Mimi puzzled.

  Cade didn’t bother to answer. Janice had sold him out. She’d dirtied his name with Tocko. She was doing the same with Moran. She knew he had been released. She had good reason to fear him. It seemed logical to assume that she would expect him to catch up with her and she would prepare some defense against him.

  The something he’d heard or seen in Bay Parish continued to nag at his mind. Suddenly he remembered what it was. Of course. He’d heard the sound of a small plane warming up. Moran was a flyer. It was only a few minutes by air from Bay Parish to where he stood. If Moran had been in Bay Parish he knew that Joe Laval was dead and that Tocko had signed a warrant charging Cade with the murder. All Janice had to do to protect herself was to have the local sheriff waiting.

  Mimi swatted at a mosquito. “I am uncomfortable here. The bugs are biting me.”

  “Besides, you’re anxious to get to Moran.”

  “After all, he is my ‘usban’.”

  “Sure,” Cade said. “Before you let Jeem touch you, you insisted he take you to the priest and also the registrar.” He cupped one of Mimi’s elbows. “Okay. Let’s go see what’s what.”

  His sneakers made no sound but the loose planks rattled under his weight. The click of Mimi’s high heels sounded unnaturally loud in the moonlit silence.

  Along with the other improvements, a beach had been pumped in and they had to wade through two hundred feet of loose sand to reach the wide porch of the lodge. The cypress-paneled foyer was huge, with a natural stone fireplace at each end. The furniture was new, oversized and leather. A deeply tanned youth wearing oil-stained slacks and a clean white seaman’s skivy was standing behind a small hotel desk, tinkering with the star drag on a deep-sea reel. He didn’t look like a hotel clerk to Cade.

  The youth laid down the reel and looked at Cade’s white captain’s cap. “I thought I heard a boat put in. Don’t tell me you came down from the city in the dark?”

  Cade shook his head. “No. Up from Southwest Pass.”

  “That’s an even tougher haul. You must know these waters.”

  “I do.”

  The youth fumbled under the desk and found a registration card. “Well, we aren’t really open yet but I think we can take care of you. A room for you and the missus? Or do you want one of the private cottages?”

  “Neither,” Cade said. He leaned an elbow on the desk. It was an effort for him to use the name. “Mrs. Cain is here?”

  “Yes, sir, she is.”

  “Could I see her?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Mimi asked, almost shyly, “And Mr. James Moran? He, too, is here?”

  The youth back of the desk looked puzzled. “Yeah. Sure. They’re both here. They came down a few days ago to get the place ready for the grand opening next week. Who shall I say wants to see them?”

  He turned as the door behind the desk opened and a striking girl wearing horn-rimmed harlequin glasses emerged carrying a handful of papers.

  “These reservations, John — ” she began, then used her free hand to rip off her glasses and stared at the couple in front of the desk. “Cade. Cade, darling,” she screamed. “You’re home!”

  Cade instinctively sucked in his breath. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. Janice hadn’t changed. Her hair was still the color of ripe wheat. Her green-gray eyes were wide set and intelligent. The high, firm, peaked breasts he’d dreamed of in Pyongyang still strained against the bodice of the smartly simple cotton dress she was wearing. Neither Tocko nor Moran showed. Her deep tan was becoming. It made her face look even younger than he remembered it, almost virginal.

  The papers flew one way, the glasses another, as she rushed into his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, my darling, my darling.”

  Cade felt like a goddamn fool. He stood mute, motionless, embarrassed, holding the familiar body lightly. It wasn’t the reception he’d expected. Janice wasn’t afraid of him. She seemed genuinely glad to see him.

  Janice pressed her lips to his and talked into his mouth. “Then you did get my letters and my cable.”

  Cade felt even more like a fool. “No,” he said, flatly. He tilted the girl’s saucy chin with a crooked forefinger. “Why so glad to see the returned hero? I thought you divorced me.”

  Janice brushed the divorce aside as immaterial. “Oh, that,” she said, lightly. “I can explain that.” Her lower lip quivered. Her green-gray eyes filled with tears. “Well, aren’t you going to kiss me? Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  12 Bed and Blonde

  Cade decided he didn’t like Moran. The big man smiled too much. He showed too many teeth when he smiled. He was too glib, too hail-fellow-well-met. And Cade didn’t like the way he looked at Mimi. He’d met men like Moran before. There was nothing of which the big black Irishman wouldn’t be capable.

  Cade looked across the littered table at Mimi. Mimi had drunk too much wine. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. She sat looking at the face of the man beside her like a small white kitten fascinated by a big sleek torn.

  Janice had finished her meal, and now was saying, “I know how it must have looked to you, Cade. But think of the spot I was in. To all intents and purposes, except legally, you were dead.”

  “So you divorced me.”

  Janice played with his fingers. “All right. So I made a mistake. But at the time, nothing mattered. I thought I’d lost you forever.” She was frank. “I had myself to look out for.”

  “So you came back to Bay Parish and sold my property to Tocko Kalavitch.”

  “I sold the house.”

  “He lies,” Moran said. “That’s one of the reasons I broke up with Tocko.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was trying to push Janice around. His only claim to the property is pre-emption. You see, as soon as he heard you’d been shot down he moved right in and built this lodge, figuring no one would ever call him.”

  “For what purpose?” Cade asked. “I mean, why did he build it?”

  Moran was apparently as frank as Janice had been. “As a drop for aliens.” He lighted a Turkish cigarette. “Oh, not your run-of-the-deck five-hundred-dollar a head wetbacks but the big shots who had to get out of where they were. Men who could afford to pay through the nose. Big shots, for instance, who’d bucked even bigger shots behind the Iron Curtain. Men for whom the MVD were looking.”


  “MVD?” Mimi hiccuped.

  “Russian secret police,” Cade explained. “Short for Ministry of the Interior, formerly NKVD, Narodny Kommissar Vnutrenych Del or People’s Commissariat for the Interior.”

  Moran laughed easily. “You seem to know.”

  “I just spent some time north of the Yalu,” Cade replied dryly.

  Moran went on, “Anyway, he started pushing Janice around. I wasn’t too happy in what I was doing. So when she came up with the idea of making a swank hideaway of this place and offered me a cut if I’d help get it started, I jumped at the chance.” He patted Mimi’s hand. “What the hell? I’m no angel but then I’m not a complete heel and some of Tocko’s business methods gagged me.”

  Cade drank the dregs of his highball. “Such as?”

  Moran met his eyes. “Such as six guys one of his boats brought in and because a Coast Guard cutter was getting too close, he dropped them off on big south mud lump. That way the respectable shrimp fleet owner, Tocko Kalavitch, wouldn’t have to take a fall.” Moran added virtuously, “At least, when I was flying guys in from Martinique and Caracas, I fulfilled my contract. I set them ashore on the mainland.”

  Janice snuggled even closer to Cade. “Then, when I heard you’d been released, I wrote right away and I cabled. I even called Tokyo, long distance, but your old wing commander said you’d been flown to Hawaii and from there to the States.” She smiled. “But I knew that sooner or later my letters or my cable would catch up with you. And all the time we were in New Orleans, at a flea bag called the Royal Crescent, arranging for publicity, and a charter for Jim to fly patrons down here, and soliciting political support, in case Tocko tried to make trouble — well, I expected the phone to ring any minute and you to say you were down in the lobby. I left a forwarding address at the post office. So did Jim.”

  “I see,” Cade said.

  It was a smooth, plausible story, the type of half-truth that Janice would concoct. He wondered if she thought he would believe her and how far she would go in her attempt to make her story stand up.