Assignment — Angelina (7 page)

"Over there," she whispered.

Black water gleamed through the underbrush. Far in the distance, on the main canal from Bayou Peche Rouge, came the steady beat of a fishing boat's diesel. Insects hummed and flickered through the slanting shafts of sunlight that came down through the trees.

"Stay where you are," Durell told the girl.

He went ahead cautiously. In a moment he saw the pirogue, driven up into the mud between two towering cypress trees, almost hidden by a curtain of moss. At first he thought the pirogue was empty. Then he saw the man sprawled in the bottom of the boat, on his back, his face upturned to a narrow angle of sunlight that picked him out. Something went thrashing away through the brush as Durell approached. The flies and other insects were more reluctant to leave.

His glance flicked away from the pirogue to another boat tied to a pine stump at the water's edge. It was a small outboard runabout, painted dark green and white. Nobody was in it. A woman's white handbag lay on one of the seats.

He looked again at Pete Labouisse. Only in a general way did he resemble the young GI in the snapshots. He had become pudgy, and most of his dark hair was gone except for a curly fringe around the gleaming baldness in the middle of his scalp. His eyes stared unwinkingly into the spear of sunlight that touched his face, and Durell did not have to examine him to know that he was dead.

He moved closer, anyway. The dead man was wearing cowhide fishing boots, old denims, a thin checked work shirt almost colorless from many salt-water washings. His face was badly battered, and there was blood on each hand where his fingernails had been crushed, and there was blood on the dungarees between his legs. Durell let out his breath in a long sigh. His face was like stone as he stepped beside the pirogue and very carefully loosened the wide leather belt around the trousers and looked at the ugly wound between the dead man's legs. He tasted acid in his throat. He suddenly felt cold.

A quick, shuddering gasp came from behind him and he looked up and saw Angelina with both hands pressed hard across her mouth.

"Get away," he said harshly.

"But why... how could they..."

"Don't ask me. I told you to get away." Durell straightened and pushed her back toward the trail. Angelina stumbled and fell to her knees and covered her face with her hands. A moaning came from her. Durell said quickly: "Is that your runabout, with the pirogue?"

Her head moved, nodding. Her hair screened her face.

"How did you happen to find him here?" he insisted.

"I... I usually come to his house this way."

"And he was alive when you found him?"

"I thought he was, yes."

Durell was insistent. "Did he say anything to vou at all? Did he say who did it?"

"N-no."

"Didn't you examine him when you found him?"

"I was... I didn't want to touch him."

The silent green of the underbrush and the dark waters of the swamp were suddenly and infinitely menacing. Durell still felt cold. "Go ahead and be sick, if you want to…" he said gently.

She shook her head. "I'm all right now."

He helped her to her feet. Her weight was soft and heavy against him. "Sam, I don't understand. Why should anyone do such a horrible thing? What kind of men were they?"

"I don't know," he said. His voice was curiously flat. "I expect to find out."

He had the feeling they were being watched. The way back to the house seemed shorter on the return than on going, and although he saw nothing out of the ordinary, the feeling that his every step was being observed remained with him. Angelina walked quietly beside him. Some of the shock was gone from her eyes, and he kept talking to her, questioning her, to help her mind with other problems.

"Were you in love with him, Angelina?"

"I don't know. Perhaps. What is love? He was a good man. He wanted me; he was in love with me for a long time." Her eyes slanted briefly up at Durell's lean face. "Nobody has ever had me since we — since you, Sam. Do you believe that?"

"Why not?" he said. "Yes, I believe you."

"I was in love with you. I know what that was like. It was not the same with Pete. He tried to be successful, but some people never make it. No matter what they do or how hard they work, they are failures. It was like that with Pete. I know he wanted Papa's store. I guess he thought if he married me and had the store, he could run it and make out, somehow. But I never had in mind to let him take over the business from me. I know he would have ruined it, even with the best of intentions. He was that land of a man."

"But you were going to marry him," Durell said.

"Who else is there? A woman must have a man down here, or she dries up and dies in this swamp and heat. I could depend on Pete. He didn't drink or gamble. He was gentle with me." Her face moved, changing. Her mouth shook. "That terrible thing should not have been done to him."

"He had something they wanted. Something you may know about. Jonathan tells me that you went through his stuff and tried to sell it off, the last time, when you thought he was dead. When he was down in Yucatan. If you went through the things he owned, you ought to have some idea of what it might be."

"Oh, God," she said. "That.

"What was it?"

"So Jonathan told you. You must think I'm a greedy bitch."

"I know what you are, Angelina," he said quietly.

"Listen, Pete and I were engaged to be married. His family is gone; there was nobody but me. I tried to run his photo shop for him, at first, but I'm a business woman, not a photographer. Finally, when I gave up hope for him, I decided to close the studio and get rid of everything. What else could I do? Was I supposed to leave all that stuff just to rot?"

"I'm not criticizing you; I just want to know what you might have tried to sell."

She walked away toward the house, then stopped abruptly. Her face was broken. "Maybe I loved Pete in a funny kind of way. Not the way I once loved you, Sam. When I think of those crazy days, I still get a funny feeling inside me. Maybe I'm still in love with you. Would that surprise you?"

"What did you try to sell, Angelina?"

Her eyes searched his face. "Its all gone, isn't it?"

"Angelina, please."

"All right," she said. "I understand you, Sam. I'm sorry. I forgot you're some kind of a cop. That's what your grandpa told me, so I guess you have to ask questions. There wasn't anything valuable. Just a lot of old junk he saved, and his studio equipment. I advertised the cameras and stuff for sale, but there were no buyers. Then I had to go to St. Louis for some supplies for the general store. I do all my own purchasing. I'm not bad at business, you know. You'd be surprised. Anyway, while I was in St. Louis, I saw this ad in the newspapers, asking for war souvenirs, Hitler autographs, that kind of things. I remembered that Pete said he had some papers he liberated, as he said, from some factory in Germany. It was all so long ago. But I remembered it, from going through his things, and I answered the ad. I used a newspaper box because I was just in town for a few days, and I signed my answer A. Greene. That's my business signature. But, anyway, before I even got an answer, I had to come back to Peche Rouge — and there was Pete, home again. He was awful mad at me." She smiled thinly and touched her face with sadly reminiscent fingers. "He slapped me. It was the only time he got rough with me.

"So you never followed up the ad?" Durell asked.

"No."

"Did you look through Pete's things in his bedroom to see if those papers are still there?"

"They're gone, some of them. I looked, because the place was turned inside out when I got here, just before you showed up, Sam. But the war was so long ago! What value could all that junk have today?"

"I wish I knew," Durell said.

"Pete wasted an awful lot of time with those things. That was his trouble. He was a tinkerer. He thought once of going into the photostat business, too, and he spent every night for a month practicing, making copies of all that junk."

Durell halted. They were at the back door of the photo shop. Traffic rumbled on the highway beyond the house, and he felt the vibration of a heavy refrigerator rig rolling north from the shrimp canneries. The ground shook underfoot.

"Pete made photostatic copies?" he asked softly.

"Sure, but..."

"Where are they?"

Angelina shrugged. "I don't know. I can't think. I feel sick now." Her fingers pulled at her mouth and she looked away from him. "In the house someplace, I guess. In the darkroom, maybe."

"Take it easy," he said.

"Why did they do
that
to him?" she whispered again.

He had no answer for her.

Slago was drunk. He didn't show it, but Mark knew about it, and he was careful. Slago sprawled on Mark's bed, but Mark made no objection this time. It was the second day since they had picked up Labouisse, since the explosive quarrel over the man's escape. Slago had been drinking steadily, enough to founder an ordinary man. Mark remembered the terror he had felt when they had discovered Labouisse was gone. All that day and night they had been poised for flight, expecting a momentary alarm. But nothing had happened. The man had to be dead. Mark thought that he, too, might have wished for death, after what Slago had done to Labouisse.

Erich had been in a white rage when he learned about Labouisse's escape. "How did it happen? How could you have been so stupid?"

Slago was arrogant, filled with a black excitation. "The punk was out cold. We picked him up and worked him over on a back road out in the swamps, but he'd left his gear at a bar in that fishing town where his boat docked, and we thought we'd better pick it up so nobody would ask Questions about it."

Corbins pale eyes had jumped to Mark. "So you both just left him there?"

Slago shrugged. "It was a pretty buggy place. And Mark was kind of sickish." Slago grinned, his thick-lipped mouth spreading in memory. "I had to work pretty rough on the punk. He was stubborn. And Mark was no damned help at all. So when we came back, he was gone. Crawled away into the water, somehow. But you don't have to worry about him, Erich. He's drowned. Nobody will find him in them swamps."

"If they do, and if he is alive, we are finished."

"It's all right, I tell you. We got what we wanted."

Corbin nodded. "Yes, you did well in that respect."

"Then start making with the chemistry, hey?"

Mark said thinly: "I think we'd better run for it. There's still a chance he'll be found. And there won't be a sheriff anywhere around who could keep the mob back when they find out what Slago had to do to make him talk."

Jessie had turned curiously, then. "What did he do?"

"Slago emasculated him," Mark said flatly.

Jessie's face was expressionless. Mark didn't think she understood. Then she turned and walked out of the room and he watched her through the window as she went into Moon's bar. She didn't come back.

In spite of Mark's caution, Corbin insisted they stand pat and wait where they were. Flight might bring suspicion, too. The proprietor of the camp would describe them to any local cop who nosed around, and Erich's argument sounded cold and logical. Mark's worry had been met by contempt from Slago. Slago was different; it was as if something had broken down inside him since he had worked on Labouisse. He had been arrogant and loud before; he was infinitely dangerous now, and Mark noted a subtle shift in the relationship between all four of them. His own authority was appreciably weakened. It was true he had moved fast, driving hard back to Peche Rouge, seeing the futility of staying on the coast and trying to track down the escaped man. He had torn through Labouisse's house quickly and efficiently. He had found what they were looking for. Corbin was satisfied with that. Yet Mark felt he had to do something more, to re-establish his authority over them all.

It was growing dark now, and waves of red pulsed through the motel room from the camp's bar. Laughter came from there, and the rough sound of men's voices. A new fishing party had checked in from Arkansas today, three men and two women, all noisy, all guzzling beer. Mark finished shaving and turned to look at Slago sprawled on his bed. Slago had almost emptied the bottle.

"Better cut down on the drinking tonight," Mark told him. "Corbin ought to be ready for the test. It might have some kind of effect Corbin doesn't know about, if you're liquored up."

"Hell, I aint afraid of no test," Slago said.

"I didn't say you were." There was a germ of an inflection in Slago's thick voice that interested Mark. "It's funny, though, Erich telling
us
to test the stuff while he waits safely outside."

"So?"

"So maybe he doesn't trust his own work," Mark suggested carefully. "Maybe he thinks it might work out differently from the formula."

"Ah, shut up," Slago said. "You chicken, you don't have to do anything.

"Oh, I'll go through with it," Mark said. "It ought to be pretty soon now.

"He'll let us know when," Slago muttered. He kept on drinking.

Mark stepped outside. It was like breathing steam. Mist hung over the river and made a halo of pink around the neon lights of the bar. Erich's cabin next door was closed. An air conditioner Jessie had gone to New Orleans to buy pulsed quietly in the back window frame. Mark dried his hands on his handkerchief. His fingers felt cool and moist, but he was drenched with sweat. He wished his stomach would settle down, and he wished Jessie would step outside so he could talk to her for just a few moments before the test started. It wasn't that he was afraid, Mark told himself. He had proved his nerve many times, but this was different. A man couldn't help imagining things in a queer setup like this.