A Deadly Shade of Gold (20 page)

On that almost deserted corner I had the feeling I was being watched by many more eyes than just the round ones of my pack of children. I remembered an old trick I had learned the hard way, from some marines. They had used combat knives. Unless I gave these characters something to think about, there was a chance they might keep challenging me, and get a little ugly.

I went smiling to the man with the knife and held out my hand and said, in my hideous Spanish,

"Su cuchillo, por favor. Por un momentito."

He hesitated and handed it over. It was just barely long enough. I stuck it into the side of the building, shed my shoes and socks, and then stood out in the dust with the knife, facing the pair of them. I held the very end of the haft in one fist, and the end of the blade in the other, edge up.

Then I jumped over it like over a jump rope, forward and back. You have to be reasonably limber and agile, but there is a very simple trick to it.

You appear to hold the knife in your fists, but actually only the middle finger overlaps it. Then at the peak of the jump you turn the blade down by extending the index and middle fingers of each hand. You hold the knife between those fingers. It gives you more jumping room, and you are jumping over the dull side. As you land you curl your fingers back into fists, and this gives the knife the half turn back and brings it blade upward. It is very hard to detect, and even after you
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know the trick of it, it takes practice.

I put socks and shoes back on and presented the knife to its owner with a flourish, saying,

"Gracias, amigo. "

They looked at me without expression. The knife owner got slowly to his feet and moved away from the building. He held the knife as he thought I had held it and looked questioningly at me. I smiled and nodded. People very seldom cut themselves seriously. The hands release the knife instinctively. Some of the most agile ones can go over the blade side even when held in the fists.

He looked dubiously at the blade, moistened his lips, gathered himself and tried it. The knife flew through the air. He landed on his rear with a roar of dismay. The bright blood speckled the dust, and the children howled with laughter. His friend was rolling in the dust, helpless with laughter. A crowd began to gather, and I went on my way. Puerto Altamura was going to have an epidemic of gashed feet. I felt like a cruel bastard. I looked back. One of the children had acquired a knife and was gathering himself to make a try.

I roared at them and raced back. I took the knife from the kid. Slowly and carefully I showed them all the trick. Then the laughter was greater than ever. Men began practicing. Then all sound stopped and I saw the first man limping toward me, holding the big knife low. I had made a fool of him. It was a point of honor. He had the splendid idea of gutting me like a fish. I smiled and held my hand out to him and took a chance on saying, "Su cuchillo, por favor."

He stopped the advance and glowered at me. Then the corner of his mouth twisted. Then he grinned foolishly. And then he began to laugh. Everybody laughed. Arm in arm, in the midst of a pack of his buddies, we went across the square and into the Cantina Tres Panchos, and I bought a drink for the group. The hubbub was heard upstairs, and two of the girls came down, the one with dyed red hair Nora and I had seen, and Felicia. Felicia was a fantastic vision in purple stretch pants, a white canvas halter, and golden slippers with four inch heels.

My new friend was hobbling about leaving bloody footprints on the floor. The kids were clotted in the doorway, staring in. All the men explained simultaneously to the girls, recounting the action with many gestures. One tried to demonstrate and gave himself a good slice on the bottom of a horny foot. The girls shrieked and got the two wounded over to a table and bound up their gashes.

Felicia came over to me at the bar, and slipped an arm around my waist and hugged herself close to me. There was a small tentative silence and then it was accepted. I patted the taut purple fabric of a haunch and confirmed it. Somebody fed coins into the juke, and the narrow redhead began a solo twist. Felicia put her mouth close to my ear and said, "Goddam fool, you, Trrav.

You get killed in my village one day."

When somebody led her off to dance, I gave Mustache enough money for another round for them all, and went off to finish my shopping. Mustache seemed to have become very fond of me. Maybe he hoped I'd come and jack up business during the slack hours every day.

After an after-dinner drink, Nora and I left the bar and went back to the rooms. She paced back and forth, complaining, while I improvised a grapnel. I had bought three monstrous shark hooks, some heavy wire and some cheap pliers. I bound the shanks of the hooks together to form a huge gang hook, using plenty of wire to make it firm and also give it a little extra weight.

I had also purchased fifty feet of nylon cord that looked as if it would test out at about five
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hundred pounds breaking strength.

"If you insist on being an idiot, why go so early in the evening?"

"When people are moving around, a little extra noise doesn't mean too much."

"When people are moving around, where are you?"

"Watching them, dear. If everybody is asleep and all the lights are out, I can't find out anything, can I?"

"Do you expect to be invisible?"

"Practically, dear."

"How long will it take?"

"I haven't any idea."

"Honest to God, Trav, I don't see why...."

I put the pencil flashlight in my pocket and took her by the shoulders and shook her. "How did Sam look?"

The color seeped out from under her tan. "You cruel bastard," she whispered.

"How did he look?"

"My God, Trav! How can you...."

I shook her again. "Just say the word, honey. I'll put away my toys and we'll get into the sack.

And then we'll go on back home anytime you say, and you can refund my split of all the expenses, and we'll forget the whole thing. Call it an interesting vacation. Call it anything you want. Or you can let me go ahead my way. It's your choice, Nora."

She moved away from me. She walked slowly to the other side of the room and turned and looked at me. Barely moving her lips she said, "Good luck tonight, darling."

"Thank you."

I had on dark slacks, a long sleeved dark blue shirt, dark canvas shoes. I had no identification on me. I had the silly bedroom gun in one trouser pocket, the pencil light and pocket knife in the other, the grapnel coiled around my waist.

We turned the lights out. I opened the draperies and cautiously unhooked the screen, turned it and brought it into the room and stood it against the wall beside the window. I looked out, it was all clear. I turned back to her and held her and kissed her hungry nervous mouth. She felt exceptionally good in my arms, good enough so that I wished for a moment she had said the hell with it. Then I straddled the sill, turned, hung by my fingertips, kicked myself away from the side of the building and dropped.

It was about nine feet down to soft earth. I had the right window marked by its relationship to a crooked tree. On my return, I would flip pebbles against the window to signal her. I would toss the line in and she would make it fast. If for any reason we could not anticipate, anyone had to come into the rooms, she would turn my shower on and close the bathroom door before answering the hall door.

She had the waiting. Maybe that was the hardest part.

Twelve

IT was almost over before it began. It was almost over in one of the world's nastiest ways for McGee. I saw a man's body after it had happened to him that way, and it is one of my most persistent memories.

When I went up the road, the third of a moon was high enough to make the going easy. I stayed in the shadows. Halfway up I heard a car coming and saw lights and had all the time in the world to go down the slope on the sea side of the road and flatten out. It turned into the Escutia driveway, fifty feet before it got to where I was.

When I got to the Boody place, I stepped over the chain and went around to the side of the house opposite the swimming pool, and made my way to the Garcia wall through the Boody grounds. I stood by the wall a long time, listening, and heard nothing but the normal noises of the night, and the whining of mosquitoes looking for the meat of my neck.

After debating a moment, I decided to try a place where the top of the wall wasn't shadowed by the trees inside. I might be more visible, but I had that damned glass to fool with. I wanted the hooks to catch the inside edge of the wall. If they'd rounded it off, I'd have to try flying it into a tree. That made retrieving it more of a problem. I straightened the loops out and tossed the hooks over the wall. I heard them clink against the inside of the wall. I pulled them slowly, worrying about sawing the nylon against sharp glass. They caught, but when I put on a little pressure there was a tink of breaking glass, and a piece of glass and the hooks came back to me.

After a third try, and more glass each time, I knew the wall was rounded off on the inside, another little touch of professionalism.

I moved back away from the wall and moved along parallel to it, moving further away from the road, until I came to a tree I liked, growing on the inside. I held the very end of the line in my left hand, the loops between thumb and finger, and swung the grapnel around my head a few times with my right hand and let it fly. It arched into the leaves with too much noise. I listened, then slowly pulled it tight. It was fast, and apparently on a good solid branch, because when I put my weight on it, there was only about a six-inch give.

The angle of the line took it across my edge of the wall. At least it was out of the glass. I put my rubber soles against the white wall and walked up it, at an acute and unpleasant angle. The damned nylon was so thin it dug painfully into my hands. The concavity near the top was tricky, but I took a giant step and got one foot on the edge, and then the other, and pulled myself erect, wiggling my toes into areas between the shards of glass.

Holding the line lightly for balance, I looked into the grounds. Off to my right I could see a faint light which I guessed was the gate light. I could see the lights of the main house almost dead ahead, between the leaves. I broke a few shards off, snubbing at them with the toe of my right shoe, and got myself a more balanced place to stand, then tried to yank the damned hooks free.

They would not come free. All I did was make a horrid rustling in the leaves.

I certainly could not go up such a thin line hand over hand to free it. As I decided it was hopeless, I gave a last despairing yank and it came free so unexpectedly that I did a comedy routine on top of the wall, my back arched, waving my arms wildly to keep from falling back outside.

When I had balance, I brought the grapnel up and fixed it firmly onto the outside corner of the wall at a place where the line lay between the sharpness of glass as it crossed the top of the wall. I lowered myself on the inside, and let myself down in the same way as I had climbed up. I knew I might want to find the line in one hell of a hurry. There were too many trees, and the wall was too featureless, the white of the line too invisible against it. Then I had an idea, and I fumbled around and found some soft moist earth and took it in both hands and made a big visible smear on the white wall. I knew I could find that in a hurry.

I started toward the house. I had not gone ten feet from the wall when I heard it. Something coming at me fast, with the little guttural sound of effort, a scrabble of nails skidding on the ground. It came into the silver of moonlight a dozen feet away, and made one more bound and launched itself up at me, a big black silent murderous Doberman. A killer dog is peculiarly horrible in the silence of the attack. A long time ago I sat with others on hard benches and listened to a limey sergeant talk about and demonstrate hand-to-hand assault and defense. They gave us three days of him. He knew all the nasty arts, and knew them well. We learned interesting little facts from him-for example, an inch or two of the tip of a knife high enough in the diaphragm, just under the breast bone, will cause an instantaneous loss of consciousness, whereas the whole blade into the chest or belly will give them time to bellow.

He spent about fifteen minutes on the guard dogs we might run into around enemy supply installations. He had a healthy awe of them. He said they leap for the throat, bowl you over like being hit by a truck, savage you to death in moments. The attack is so swift, a gun or knife is often useless. But he said there was one weak point in their attack. And you had to be very quick to take any advantage of it.

Once the dog launches itself into its final leap, it is committed. He had his assistant sling an imitation dog at him, a canvas sack of sand with the two front legs sticking out of it. The man swung it close to the ground and hurled it at the sergeant's chest. The sergeant snatched at a forepaw, grasped it, pivoted and fell back, using the momentum of his fall and all the strength of arms and back to hurl the imitation dog on beyond him, in the same direction as its charge. He could throw it a startling distance. I remembered how it bounced in the dust.

He said that in the leap the forepaws are relatively motionless. Snatch too soon and it can twist and tear your hands off. Wait too long and it is very hard to throw something that has hold of you by the throat.

He threw it a final time and dusted his hands and said, "Tykes the art out of im. Spoils is bloody leg for im. All you chaps do a spot of practice."

With that black shape launched at me, I wished I'd given it some more practice. Fear either freezes you or makes you eerily quick and strong. I was pivoting and falling as I felt my fingers of both hands dig into the corded forearm of the dog, with no memory of how I had managed to grasp it, an index finger hooked around the knob of the elbow.

Unless I could impart enough centrifugal force to keep his head away from my hands, I was going to lose meat in a painful and ugly way, so I heaved as hard as I could, combining his leap, my backward fall, the pivot, into a single flight. I felt something give as I let go, heard a small whistling whine, a meaty thud as he struck the wall combined with a clopping sound as it snapped his jaws shut, a softer thud as he fell to the ground.