Assignment — Angelina (6 page)

The town was small, with the highway acting as the main street. There were the usual bars and diner, the National Bank in traditional granite, a courthouse square with more giant oaks, two sporting-goods shops, and the general store that Angelina had inherited from her father, Abner Greene. Durell drove slowly by each place as it evoked his boyhood memories. The old frame school building had been replaced by one of brick, with coldly functional lines that jarred radically with the sleepy, weather-beaten houses surrounding it. There were the same churches, however, and the Town Landing on the bayou canal looked drowned in golden sunlight. Pelicans swam in dirty-brown awkwardness in the murky waters around the boats tied to the pier. At the northern edge of the town limits he found Pete Labouisse's photo shop.

It was in a gray, two-story frame house, in the front of which had been placed a store window. The house needed a coat of paint. The scrubby lawn beyond the sagging picket fence needed mowing. There was a scanty display of photographic equipment, cameras and enlargers, but most of the window space was filled with big yellow and red Kodak ads. Behind the display, a large black window shade had been drawn against the heat of the morning sun.

Nobody was in sight. Durell drove a bit farther and parked in front of a diner and walked back. The heat clamped on the back of his neck like a giant fist. Distantly, from the center of town, came the sound of church bells. Even the insects were somnolent in the humidity.

There were framed baby portraits, none of them very good technically, flanking the front door. Durell did not go in through the gate in the picket fence. He cut between the next two houses and returned to the back of the building by way of a sandy lane edged with a rickety board fence. Weeds grew chest-high on either side of the walk. Behind the house was a wilderness of scrub pine that merged into the richer green of the bayou, and he realized that the channel was not too far off when he heard the steady heat of a boat's motor through the trees.

The upper windows were closed with wooden shutters. A gallery circled the back end of the house, with a separate flight of steps going up to a door on the second level. A pirogue rested on two sawhorses among the weeds in the back yard.

Durell felt the weight of his gun in its holster under his arm. He had put on his jacket in order to cover the revolver, and he felt a trickle of perspiration sliding down his chest as he paused in the shadows of the fence. He didn't like the desolate air of this place. He had approached danger many times before, and he had developed an intuitive feeling for it, much like the sixth sense Jonathan had instilled in him toward a poker hand. In his business a hunch was usually worthless, inferior to an objective appraisal of a given situation, with a logical course of action worked out beforehand. Yet his feeling of danger persisted, and he did not deny its importance.

He waited and watched, but he saw nothing and heard nothing except the occasional sound of traffic on the highway beyond the house. Finally he left the shadows of the fence and walked around the pirogue in the back yard and approached the back door. It was standing slightly open.

He tested the board steps going up to it. They would creak under his weight, and he walked on the very edge, moving without sound until he touched the weathered door panel. Insects clicked and hummed and buzzed in the weeds behind him. The passing boat in the invisible canal had gone by. A fish-hawk sailed silently overhead and settled in one of the Australian pines. Durell pushed the door open, moving close inside with the swing of it as he had been trained to do, and then slid quickly to one side against the wall.

Something fell over with a loud, echoing clatter. He got his gun in his hand, ready for use. But nothing more happened.

He saw that a tin pail had been balanced precariously on the board floor just inside the doorway, and he knew it had been set there deliberately, to give warning to someone inside the house if the door should be opened. Pressure began to exert itself along his nerves. Pete Labouisse was the last survivor of the squad, except for Fleming and Slago. Perhaps he wasn't too late, after all.

He found himself in an old-fashioned, summer kitchen, a shed filled with odds and ends of broken furniture, lumber, and what looked like the parts of a copper still. Another door was open directly ahead. He waited, listening, then moved through this doorway into a more modern kitchen, and then he waited again.

A board creaked faintly in the ceiling overhead.

Durell moved into the corridor. To his right was an open door with a small printed sign thumbtacked to it:
Darkroom.
He glimpsed wash trays, shelves of chemical bottles, two enlargers on a metal-topped table. A third enlarger lay on the floor, shattered, where it had been carelessly or irritably shoved off the worktable. A filing cabinet stood open, and small yellow envelopes of negatives were scattered on the linoleum floor. The air was heavy with the sharp smell of spilled developing solutions.

The floor board upstairs creaked again.

Durell drifted silently toward the front of the house. There was no one in the front shop, but a glimpse of wreckage and supplies strewn about behind the glass-topped counters snowed that this too, had been searched with quick impatience. He turned his body slightly and looked up the shadowy stairway to the second-floor landing.

With every window in the house shuttered, the place was a dark oven, filled with the smell of mildew that not even the pungency of spilled photographic acids could cover. A truck rumbled by on the highway, and windowpanes rattled everywhere. Whoever was upstairs took advantage of the sound to retreat a few cautious steps toward the back gallery. Whoever it was, he was trying to circle around toward the back door on that gallery and get down the rear stairway while Durell was still in the front part of the house.

Durell went up the steps with a quick, silent rush.

A shadow lunged to the left and away from him in the hallway. Something hurtled through the air and missed his head and crashed with the sound of splintering glass against the wall at his side.

"Hold it," Durell called softly. "You're covered."

He glimpsed an oval face, a flash of white, and then the shadow plunged toward the back door. Durell lifted his gun, then suddenly tossed it aside and dived for the figure. It was a girl. She gasped in sudden terror and whirled, fighting him, her nails scratching at his face, her knee rising expertly to disable him. He slipped by her attack and caught one arm and forced it firmly up behind her back, driving her a few stumbling steps ahead of him until she jolted against the corridor wall.

"Take it easy," he said gently.

"Let me" go!" she breathed. "You filthy, thieving murderer..."

She was full and firm, writhing in his grip. She wore a man's chambrey shirt and skin-tight dungarees. Her long black hair swung wildly across Dwells face as she tried to bend her neck and bite at his hands. Durell locked an ankle across hers and threw her off balance. She fell to the floor, dragging him with her.

"Easy, Angelina," he said.

She struggled another instant, arching her body to throw off his weight. Then she abruptly went limp and silent, except for the quick panting of her breath. "Who are you?" she whispered.

"Durell." He laughed softly. "Sam Durell. Are you alone here, Angelina?"

He saw the widening shine of her dark eyes. Her face moved. "What?"

"Is anyone else in the house?"

"No, no." Her voice was small.
"Sam?"

"That's right."

"Let me look at you."

He released her cautiously. Her body was quiet under him, except for the quick tumult of her breathing.

"Oh, God. Sam? Sam Durell? Is it really you?"

"Yes."

"Where did you — I haven't seen you in so long. And now you come back like this, scaring the life out of me..." She swallowed and pushed at her black hair with the back of her hand. "You're with the FBI, aren't you?"

"Not exactly."

"But you're a cop, aren't you? Your grandfather said..."

"Not exactly a cop."

"Let me up, Sam.

He stood up in the dim hallway. Light came through the shuttered door to the rear gallery, making bright yellow bars on the faded rose-colored carpet. Dust motes danced in the swirl of air currents when he moved. The girl stared up at him with slowly widening eyes.

She was lovely. She had the wild beauty of the dark bayous in her, with the raven night caught in her disheveled black hair. The depth of deep bayou pools was in her eyes. Her mouth was wide, her lower lip full and sensuous, trembling until she caught it between even white teeth. The buttons of her chambray shirt had broken loose and he saw the smooth curves of her unsupported breasts. He remembered her vividly as a girl, meeting him behind her father's store in Bayou Peche Rouge. How long ago since he had last seen her? Ten, twelve years? He remembered the awkward, exploratory nights they had shared. Their first experience, the first for either of them. He had never forgotten her. She had grown into a rich, dark beauty, like the wild orchids that bloomed in the green fastness of the delta swamps.

"Are you remembering, Sam?" she whispered.

"This isn't the time to remember anything," he said. "Where is Pierre?"

She rose gracefully to her feet. She was tall for a woman. "What brought you here just now, Sam?"

"I'm looking for Labouisse," Durell said flatly. "I came down from Washington to try to keep something from happening to him."

"You came too late. It's already happened."

"Did you search this place, Angelina?"

No.

"Did you see who did it?"

"No."

"What were they looking for? Did Pete tell you?"

"I don't know. He can't talk. He..." She shook her head. In the gloom of the hallway, her face reflected deep terror. "I came back to get some things for him. To try to help him. And then I heard you come in. My heart almost stopped. It's still beating — so crazy — Sam, don't look at me like that. Please. Not now."

"Where is Pete?" he asked again.

"Ill take you to him," she said softly. "I know I can trust you. Some men caught him and did terrible things to him. He got away from them, though, and came through the swamps in a pirogue. I found him down in Petit Gauche Channel. Remember it?"

"I remember. Is he still there?"

"Come," she said. "I was just picking up some bandages. But I think I'm too late, anyway. I think he'll be dead when we get there."

Durell walked to the gallery door and looked out. The lane and the board fence and the swamps beyond were drowned in silent sunshine. He looked beyond the scrub pines that merged into the oak and cypress a little farther out. Nothing moved that he could see. But he did not expose himself to anyone who might be out there. He turned back as Angelina came toward him. Her hands were empty.

"Where are the first-aid supplies you came to get?"

"You didn't give me a chance to pick them up." Her hand was spread on her breast. "You frightened me so, Sam..."

"Get the stuff well need," he said briefly. "And stay away from this door. Don't go out until I join you." He saw her dark eyes go wide again. She understood their danger. "Which is Pete's bedroom?"

She pointed down the hall. "That one, I think."

"Don't you know?"

She smiled. "Yes, it's that one, Sam."

He left her and went into the bedroom. It had been ransacked like the rest of the house, but much more thoroughly than the shop and the darkroom below. Durell paused in the middle of the room. The air smelled dead behind the closed shutters. In the faint light that seeped through the slats, he saw that the bed had been torn apart, the mattress slewed to the floor, and every drawer in the huge mahogany dresser stood open, with Pete's clothing scattered everywhere. His glance settled on a foot locker that had been pulled from a corner and stood askew under the windows. The broken hasp on the lock showed how it had been forced open. Army uniforms, combat boots, and a helmet liner lay on the floor. A bag containing a Purple Heart medal and a Bronze Star had been dumped without ceremony beside the helmet liner. A collection of snapshots had been given the same treatment. Durell picked up two or three. One of them showed Pete Labouisse in front of the cathedral at Chartres. A smiling, chunky G.I. with a broad face and heavy black brows and an air of excitement in the way he stood and looked into the sun and the camera. Another showed him with his arm around a Belgian farm girl, with a little boy standing to one side, looking frightened. Durell dropped the snapshots back on the floor. A black and silver crucifix shone on the wall over the bed. He looked at it for a moment and then returned to the trunk. A large manila envelope lay to one side, partly hidden under the tumbled uniforms. He opened it and saw copies of citations, service records, letters. One of the letters was on the stationery of the old Reichskanzelrei. It was signed by Goering. He leafed quickly through the sheaf of souvenirs. He didn't find what he was looking for; he hadn't really expected to.

Angelina appeared in the doorway, her figure magnificent in her chambray shirt and tight dungarees. "What is it, Sam?" She pushed again at her black hair on her forehead. She carried a small packet of surgical gauze, a bottle of iodine, a pair of scissors. "What are you looking for?"

"Don't you know?" he asked.

"I can't imagine. I don't know what this is all about."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Sam, don't make noises like a cop to me. This is Angelina, remember? My man has been hurt, and he needs help. I'm going back to him. Right now."

"All right. But be careful."

It was not far from the house on the highway. A path had been beaten through the swamp, twisting and turning among the tall cypress knees, winding deep into the green jungle of the bayou. The girl led the way. Durell walked quietly and alertly behind her. Now and then he watched the lithe movement of her hips in the tight denims she wore, and he remembered how it had been many years ago. He did not see the pirogue until Angelina halted suddenly.