Darker Than Amber (20 page)

Perhaps I was thinking more of the final steps than the final buckle. Or I had to tug harder at it. He grunted, rolled toward me, brought a hand down quickly, so quickly his fingertips brushed the back of my hand before I could get it away.
I heard his hand patting at the buckles. He sat up quickly. "Bitch!" he said. "You damn bitch! What the hell are you doing?"
As I saw him lean to reach toward the light switch, I clenched my hands together, chopped down hard at the exposed side of his throat. But in the darkness I hit too far back, and my fists rebounded off the great rubbery bulk of the trapezius muscle, and he disconcerted me with the speed with which he came lunging off the bed, shoulder slamming into my chest, big arms clamping and locking around me as he drove me back onto her empty bed. I felt my whole rib cage bending, and he had the sense to keep his face tucked against me so I couldn't get at his eyes. He grunted with effort and I felt blackness moving in behind my eyes. I chopped at the nape of his neck with my fist, but I couldn't get enough force into the awkward blows. I found an ear, wadded it small, and tried twisting it off, but the pain merely increased his power. Then, knowing there was only one chance left, I got my thumb under the corner of his jaw, fingers clamped for leverage around the back of the bull neck, and with waining strength, dug that thumb in as deeply as I could. He wheezed, and the pressure slackened enough for me to fill my lungs, pushing the darkness back. Suddenly he released me, yanked his hand back and tried a clubbing punch to the face, misjudged the distance, hit me squarely in the throat. The pain galvanized me into a leaping spasm that carried us both off the bed and down onto the floor between the beds. My throat felt full of broken gravel. He was underneath. I picked his head up by the ears and banged it down as hard as I could, twice. Then he wormed to the side, rocked up onto his shoulders, clamped me diagonally across the chest with bare legs as hard as marble, and if he'd had one more half second to bear down, that would have ended it. But I made a frantic grab at his crotch. He gave a whistling scream, flopped and floundered away, got hold of my fingers, loosened my grip, pulled himself loose, scrambled up before I could and, as I was coming up, kicked me solidly and squarely on the point of the chin with the hard front pad of his right foot.
I spilled over onto my back, perfectly conscious, but absolutely unable to move a finger or even blink my eyes or move my tongue to the other side of my mouth.
I lay there thinking with a great coldness that the most probable finish of our little rumble would be for him to lift a bare foot high, and stamp it down onto my throat. And the rail was the other side of the other door, just ten feet across the dark weather deck. "To him, you are just an object," Meyer said in a lecturer's tone.
My dead head rolled from side to side as the ship rolled. When it rolled toward him, I could see him. He sat on the edge of his bed, head between his knees, making soft crooning noises.
He got up and with a painful deliberation, he edged by me, doubled over, and went to the door of the head and opened it. I moved a finger, a whole hand. I bent my right knee. I pushed myself over onto my face, got my hands against the floor, lifted the full eighty tons of myself up onto hands and knees, reached and caught the footboard of her bed, climbed up onto my macaroni legs. I turned and looked into the head. He stood, bent over, in front of the sink. He cuddled himself with one hand, and in the other he held the dripping doll, the cinderblock swinging. His mouth kept opening and closing, but I could not hear a sound. Life was running back into my muscles, like Popeye after the great hunk of canned spinach drops down his throat. He seemed frozen there, unaware of me, unaware of anything. I went to the doorway. The jaw shelf was turned just right, at the height of the middle of my chest, and three feet away. I took a hand towel from the rack, wrapped my right fist tightly, screwed my heels into the floor and started it with a pivot of hips and back, the fist moving ten inches to the impact point, and following through a good long yard, my knuckles almost brushing the floor.
He moved a half step to the side, fell so loosely his forehead bounced when it hit the tile. I found the money belt half under her bed. The second strap had torn loose.
When I was ready to leave, I took a final look around. I had put him back into his bed, in the position I had found him. The breathing sounded the same. The single strap held the money belt safely and snugly around my middle, under my shirt. I had both parts of the doll in my hand. When the dark head had broken off, it had rolled into a corner, but when I was hunting for it, the movement of the ship brought it rolling back out to meet me. I had let the water out of the sink.
And he would not know what parts of it were real. After the early honking and bell-ringing, shouts in the corridors, hasty rappings on the stateroom door, announcements to get all baggage into the corridors as quickly as possible, I dressed quickly. She had not moved a muscle, lay in a spill of cream hair, fatty little lips agape, eyes smudged with weariness.
According to his little placard, the room steward was named Arturo Taliapeloleoni.
I moved him back into a corner of his little office. "Scusi," I said. "I wish to ask you to help me with something of the greatest importance, per favore."
The blow in the throat had given my voice an unmistakably conspiratorial quality. It made him look apprehensive. "Ah?" he said.
"I am in numero sei. Here is a token of importance." He accepted it too casually, thinking it a ten. Then he saw the second zero and the color went out of his face, surged back pinkly. "If it is anything I can do, signore." The bill had flicked out of sight.
"I bought passage alone. But now there is a lady in my stateroom. She is from other quarters aboard. It is of the greatest importance that she and I be permitted to remain aboard until mid-morning."
"That would be impossible, truly!"
"Many things can be arranged. Indeed, they must be arranged. Or it is possible that as she walks out of the customs building her husband might shoot her right there, in front of your passengers. He is a violent man. Others could be hurt. It would not be good for the company."
Even his lips were pale. "It would be very bad. But there is the question of the luggage inspection, no?"
"Her luggage will be taken off by someone. Mine will be taken off by someone else, a friend. It will go through customs and be taken away."
"But if two passengers are missing?"
"The one who counts them could be told of the necessity for this arrangement."
I dipped my fingertips into my shirt pocket and extracted the other two bills, a fifty and a twenty. I gave him the fifty. "This could purchase some small cooperation in the counting?"
"It is possible."
I gave him the twenty. And this, of course, is for yourself and the room maid."
"The cleaning and the fumigation starts. From stateroom to stateroom
"Does not a man of your position have a sign he can place upon both doors of numero sei, that it is to be skipped until certain other work is accomplished? After all, you do not sail for the homeland until Friday, I understand."
"It is very difficult, but..
"How many chances in one lifetime does a man have to save the life of a beautiful woman?"
He straightened, lifted his chin. "It will be done!"
"You have great understanding."
When I went back to the room, she had still not stirred.
I selected the essentials she would need. Her white bag would hold them readily. I put the yellow and white checked pajama shift in the flight bag, squashed the bag flat enough to go into my bag, and, locking the door behind me again, toted it down to Meyer's hovel.
"Have you got a cold?" he asked.
I dropped the bag in the corridor outside the door. His was there. Both were tagged. "They'd both end up on the end table at customs inspection. I pulled the door shut, pulled my shirt loose, unstrapped the money belt.
He put it on, and I helped him fasten it with the aid of two pieces of cord to bridge the six or seven inch gap between the ends of the straps and the buckles.
"Just in case," I said, "anything goes wrong about getting off this bucket. in case somebody thinks it's a smuggler's cute trick."
He adjusted his shirt, patted his belly. "This is a damned poor way for an economist to handle money."
"Just while we're standing here, sure, it could have been earning twenty-two cents. Your next step is to act like a hostile lady in a supermarket."
"If I am not the first off, McGee, I shall be no further back than third place."
"I flipped your art work over the side. Sorry."
"And the fellow with it?"
"No. He'll wonder how much of it he dreamed. He never saw my face. But he'll know it wasn't Del who roughed him. He got his look at the doll. It put him into shock. I deepened it a little and tucked him into the beddybye. The steward is bribed. The pig buzzes like a bee, and we are a pair of unmitigated, revolving, reprehensible sons of bitches."
"Revolving?"
"No matter from which direction the object is viewed."
I opened the door. "Best of luck."
When I got back, notices were taped to both of the state room doors, in an ornate Italian script. I went in and pushed the inside lock. Her bed was empty, the bathroom door half open, water running.
I tapped on the door. "Darling?"
"It's all fixed."
"Come in, dear."
I went in. The two small bulbs made a dingy light in the small bathroom. She was sitting in the deep narrow little tub, using the shower head off the bracket, taking a sit-down shower. Her hair, gathered together and pinned at the nape of her neck, spilled down her back. Her face was scrubbed clean, a line of suds drying along her jaw. She smiled up at me, a softness in the huge green eyes.
"Morning, lover," she said.
"Did you hear me say that I"
"Sure. I knew you'd fix it."
She soaped the washcloth, handed it to me and said, "Do my back, huh?" She reached and got her hair and piled it up on her head, held it there and leaned forward, resting her forehead against her round wet knees.
"There's women aboard, honest to Betsy, they're a yard at least across the can, and I just barely fit into this crazy tub. I bet they're always having to bring a gang of little wops into these cans and yank them loose. Gee, I kept hearing all the noise going on and dropping right back off to sleep. Done, darling? Thanks. Look, take this shower thing and rinse the suds off my back. Then dry me so I can let go of my hair. Honest, my hair is so thick and heavy, if it gets wet it doesn't dry for hours."
When I had finished the requests, she shook her hair back, rinsed the washcloth, wrung it out, soaped it again and held it out to me, saying, "You did so good on the back, you get to wash the front too."
"No time for games, kiddy. Hurry it up."
"Are you cross? Did you catch a cold? Your voice is Hoarse. you sit there and talk to me?"
"I'm not cross, but I am nervous. If my arrangements don't work, I'd rather had you dressed and on your feet if some ship's officers or customs people come hammering at the door."
"All right, dear," she said, unexpectedly humble and obedient.
It was quarter to eight, and I went out, spotted the channel buoy and estimated we'd be tied up in thirty minutes. I came across Arturo Taliapeloleoni, gave him a breakfast order and let him make another bill disappear. He brought it ten minutes later. I hustled her into the bathroom and took the tray from him at the door while he tried to peer around me without seeming to do so. With a conspirator's grimace, he left.
She squeaked with delight at the breakfast tray, especially at the carafe of brandy I'd ordered for the coffee. After she sat down and had taken the first sip of the iced juice, she tilted her head to the side and said, "Hey, we're slowing down now."
"Coming in past the breakwater now."
"When will we get off, darling?"
"Eleven, I guess. I want to get up there in a few minutes and make sure Terry gets off without creating any disturbance."
"He'll creep off like a rabbit, believe me. Why worry about him?"
"Also, I want to see if there are any cops waiting for the two of you. If this thing is coming apart, they might have more than you know. I can watch and see if anybody takes him when he gets off. That might change the whole picture."
She stopped chewing and through a wad of sweet roll said, "How will it change if?"
"If they ask the ship's officers about you, the room steward is going to put two and two together and immediately turn chicken."
She began chewing again, slowly. "Hell, they couldn't get that close to it so soon. No." She winked at me. "But they'll sure get close fast when they get the confession. Hey, what'd you do with it?"
"Printed the address on it, put the stamps on it, and gave it to my friend to mail when he gets ashore."
"Honey, I think we should have mailed it. What if he gets curious? I'd be curious about a letter addressed to the cops."
"I make the decisions. And what do you do?"
"I... I do what you say. Okay, darling. That's the way it will be. That's the way I want it, too. You're the boss man."
I gulped the second half of my cup of coffee, warned her about not answering any knock, relocked the door from the outside. I went down to the promenade deck.
They were easing the starboard up to the big wharf. There were about a hundred people in their bright clothing and sun-brown skin standing behind the chest-high hurricane fencing in the morning sunshine, awaiting the passengers and crew of the last cruise of the season of the Monica D. They were waving. I could hear the yelps of greeting. Cars glittered in the parking area. The deck crew heaved the big hawsers, and the shore hands dropped the loops over the big iron bollards. The deck winches groaned and took the slack and slowly snubbed the length and weight of her against the wharf. Her deep rumbling of the main engines stopped, leaving the thinner sound of her generators supplying the shoreside ship's services. Two gangplanks were swung up and latched, and as the ship's captain and two of his officers went down the gangplank in spotless whites, carrying small handbags and briefcases, the PA system aboard blared that all debarking passengers should gather on the promenade deck at the amidships gangplank prepared to leave the ship as soon as all the luggage was off.
I moved aft to a place where 1 could see the ship's end of the passenger gangplank, and I saw Meyer there, belly firm against the rail, first in line. He did not see me. He looked very resolute. The cargo hatch in the lower hull had been opened, and the gravity roller conveyor set in place. Baggage was coming down and the porters were filling the first big hand truck. They would roll it into the shed and begin filling the next one, while in the customs shed other porters would hustle it, according to alphabetical name of the passenger on the tag, to the proper customs section. One out of every three pieces coming off seemed to be one of the straw liquor baskets. The passengers were lined up, clutching customs declarations and proof of vaccination, the ones wedged near the rail peering over and trying to identify their own pieces of luggage. The shoreside PA system began to wham out a series of marches, the speakers so overloaded much of it was just an overlapping resonant blur. A few favored passengers were paged and directed to go forward to the other gangplank. They were the ones with a little political leverage. They had to walk down the wide wharf corridor between the wire fence and the side of the ship, past their fellow passengers whose impatience to get off was further stimulated by this demonstration of privilege. The one-class ship in the last minutes of the cruise had become a two-class ship, and the favored dozen walked a little stiffly under the pleasant burden of importance, chatting together with excess animation. In the shed they would get a head start on the inspection.