Mission: Earth "Voyage of Vengeance" (20 page)

The elderly stewardess who seemed to be taking care of Teenie's room, the afternoon of the third day, gave me a valuable tip. She said, "Your niece is such a dear thing. I think she will be lonely when her boyfriend leaves the ship."

"Leaves the ship?" I croaked in sudden alarm. "What gave you that idea?" Gods, what a disaster that would be: Teenie would be right back in my lap and bed!

"I couldn't help but overhear them talking in the steam bath," she said. "He was a bit despondent that he was letting somebody named Bury down and wondered if the dangers might not have been exaggerated. He was also asking the purser about flights from Bermuda to New York."

"Thank Gods you told me," I said.

"The owner is who we work for," she said, probably expecting a tip. And, unaccustomed as I was to doing such things, I gave her one.

What a disaster that would be! Madison was keeping Teenie out of my bed, and Madison in the hands of the fiend, Krak, would babble his silly head off! If Madison went away, I would be attacked from within and without!

Trained as I was, it did not take long to solve it. In the radio room there was a radio-telex machine. Each night in the small hours, all by itself and unattended, it chattered out the news from the wire services, making several copies for distribution to the owner and guests. Morgan probably had had other uses for the machine, such as manipulating the family financial empire. And I had another use, too.

I carefully made a feeder tape at midnight that very night, and when the news came chattering through, I adroitly added the item to the text before the machine turned off. The item was:

The following morning at breakfast, I made very sure he saw it. "Well, you're in the news yourself," I said.

He read it. He went white. He didn't finish his powdered eggs.

The reaction was just what I wanted. And it had come in the nick of time. Bermuda was in sight.

Bermuda is a pretty place. It sits in a startlingly clear, azure sea, its bays so blue they hurt the eyes. The beaches are pink. The strangely architectured houses, of different pastel shades, are constructed to catch rainwater on their roofs and help make up for scarcity.

We did not go down the long channel to Hamilton but anchored at the port nearest the sea, St. George.

The hills looked inviting and I lost no time in going ashore. I walked up and down the main street-one might say, the only street-hoping to buy some yachting clothes. A couple of inquiries promptly verified a thing I had heard: that Bermuda had the highest cost of living in the world. I did not buy any yachting clothes.

But something else happened. I was standing near the boat landing, reading a historic plaque and looking at a replica of an original building, when I became aware of someone watching me.

Covertly, I examined him. He had on a three-piece business suit of charcoal gray, an odd costume on this island of white shirts and shorts. The fellow's jaw was blue-black despite evident recent shaving. He was of very heavy build. What was he? A cop? I couldn't decide, other than that he certainly was no Bermudian.

I sauntered up the street and found a bench where I could sit down. I pretended to be very interested in the view. But out of the tail of my eye I watched this man. Apparatus habits are never lost. He seemed far too interested in me. He went over to a bar and went in and I knew he was watching me through the window. I pretended not to observe this.

Teenie and Madison had not come ashore with me. Madison was having a case of jitters. He believed he ought to go down and sit in the bilges until we were at sea again, saying, "The Corleones might use Interpol to locate me-after all, Interpol is composed of Nazi criminals and the Nazis had Italy as an ally and the Corleones might get a lead-even though I realize it would be an awful step down from the Mafia to Interpol." Teenie had stayed behind, arguing with him.

Apparently she had gotten bored with trying to coax him out of his funk, for here she came now, in a bikini and ponytail, standing on the foredeck of a yacht speedboat which was bringing her ashore.

She leaped off onto the dock and walked up the street, looking for bicycles to rent, judging from what she asked a young black boy. He pointed in about six directions at once, stuck out his palm for money and when he didn't get any, pointed straight up with his forefinger.

Teenie evidently didn't see me sitting on the bench: she was in the glaring sun and I was in the dark shade; I was quite some distance away. She went up the street past the bar into which the black-jowled man had gone.

He came out and fell into step beside her. She was chattering away, talking about bicycles, and he was nodding.

They progressed up the street a little further and I could no longer hear what they were saying. But their heads seemed closer together.

They went past a hotel. They stopped. The man was saying something. They turned around and walked back to the hotel and went in. This was very curious because a hotel does not rent bicycles.

They were in that place for about an hour. I drew back even further out of sight. I watched the door. They came out. Teenie seemed very cheerful. They walked up the street and entered a record shop. They were gone for a while and when they came out Teenie was carrying a foot-high stack of records.

They went further up the street to a dress shop. They were gone for an awfully long time. They came out. Teenie was in a cycling costume and a black man was following with about a five-foot stack of dress boxes and the records.

They went further up the street and entered a bicycle shop. After a while they came out and were followed by a second black man who was pushing, with some difficulty, THREE bicycles.

Teenie took one of the bikes, a racing model, got on it and, with a wave to the black-jowled man, rode off deeper into the island.

The black-jowled man looked all around and then led the two porters and their burdens down to the dock, signalled the yacht for a boat and sent the purchases aboard.

He came back up the street, looked in the direction Teenie had vanished, gave a short, barking laugh and went back into the bar.

It was, on the surface, a very insignificant occurrence. My first conclusion was that the black-jowled man liked very young meat, had made a proposition, been accepted and had then paid a very high price. I tried to add up how high that price had been, considering the altitudinous cost-of-living index of Bermuda. Pretty high. Well, maybe Teenie with all her new education was worth it. That black-jowled man had certainly seemed pleased.

That evening Teenie came to dinner in a silver evening gown, silver slippers and a silver ring to bind her ponytail. Madison had found the bilges were not comfortable and he sat at the table gloomily muttering that he wished we were at sea where it was safe.

"Oh, Maddie," said Teenie, digging into her
jumbo prawns au Biscayne,
"stop glooming. The Mafia aren't going to get you here. They don't need any Mafia in this place: the whole economy is built on robbery. From its earliest days, according to all the signs, Bermuda has been a hangout for privateersmen and pirates and bootleggers and you name it, Maddie. I went swimming this afternoon at the nicest little beach you ever saw and an old gray-haired man there told me all about it. Of course, I couldn't understand a lot of his Italian..."

"Italian?" said Madison, dropping his prawn. "They aren't Italian here. They're English! A very few speak some Portuguese, but no Italian! Are you sure about this?"

"Of course, I'm sure," said Teenie. "Don't you suppose a native New Yorker like me knows words like
assassino
and
mano nera?"

Madison was chalk white. "Who was this man?"

"Oh, a nice old fellow. He wanted to know if I was from the pretty yacht and I said yes. And then when he was showing me how well he could swim, he asked me if there was a good-looking young man aboard with brown hair. And then he showed me a seashell and asked me if it didn't look like a
mano nera,
a black hand, the symbol of an
assassino...
wait. I have it here in my purse. He said I could give it to you if I wanted."

Madison stared at it. He was very white. He said to me, "How long are we going to stay in this port?"

I shrugged. "We're just cruising. I should imagine when we have fresh provisions, we can sail."

"You're all the time talking of doing research on outlaws," said Teenie. "I've heard the King of Morocco is a crook to end all crooks. Why don't we go there?"

"That's clear on the other side of the Atlantic," I said.

"Smith," said Madison, his hand shaking as he held the seashell, "I know I owe you a very great deal for saving me in New York. But could you do just one more favor and sail?"

"For Morocco?" Teenie said. "It's the grass capital of the world!"

"I'll inform the captain," I said. I was very pleased. We would be an awfully long time at sea and Madison was now fully convinced he had to come along.

We sailed about midnight, heading out through the long narrow channel dotted with lights, our wake phosphorescent beneath the stars. The lights of Bermuda fell behind and before us stretched the broad Atlantic at its least tumultuous latitude, according to Captain Bitts. It would be a leisurely and pleasant cruise.

I would regain my health and vigor. What a blessing to not be bothered with women! That daily stint I had been on had worn me to nothing. What a glorious world it would be if I never again touched a woman!

Hugging that splendid thought to me, I went below to my sleeping cabin. I disrobed and climbed into bed. I stretched out, luxuriously alone and undisturbed.

A door opened!

I had never noticed it before.

It must be the door to the adjacent suite!

TEENIE WALKED IN!

"Hey!" I said in panic and alarm. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh," she said, "the Chief Steward says he's wise in the ways of the world. He has known all along that I am not your niece. They moved me this very evening to the suite next door where I would be handier to you. They always think of the owner's comfort."

She had on a wrap. She was untying it as she stood in the middle of the floor.

"Whoa!" I said in alarm. "You can't be that hard up. This very afternoon I saw you go into a hotel with a man!"

"Oh, him," she said with a gay laugh. "What an amusing lecher. He owns all the hotels in Bermuda, you know. I only went down on him and he had an absolutely awful time trying to (bleep). He liked it all right because I am a real expert, but all it did for me was get me heated up."

She dropped her wrap off and stood there.

Then she took the clip off her ponytail and shook her hair out. She walked to the bed. "Move over," she said. "You don't think I'm going to sleep in there alone, do you?"

She climbed into the bed beside me.

"Wait a minute," I said. "What about Madison?"

She laughed gaily. "Oh, Madison is a very sweet boy. But the trouble is, he loves his mother and wouldn't think of being unfaithful to her. The thought of having intercourse with any other woman drives him up the wall."

"You're lying."

"Ask him," she said. "The only reason he tolerates me around is that he thinks of me as a kid. If Madison wasn't that way, what do you think I'm doing here in your bed, Inky?"

I blinked. There was logic in what she said. Then I saw the flaw in it. "The ship is loaded with other men. Why pick on me?"

She looked at me with her too-big eyes. "Inky, I will level with you. This equipment of yours is too great to be neglected. I am absolutely determined to be faithful to you. I will only go down on the crew to keep in practice. But you get me for a snack in the morning, a piece in the afternoon and a full-scale banquet all night. How's that?"

"NO!" I cried.

"Inky, the sports director this evening told me you were concerned I might kill myself. So if you don't like my program for you, I will have no choice but to throw myself overboard."

I shuddered. That would bring on a rap for murder.

"No," I said.

"No what?" she persisted. "No overboard or no tail?"

"No overboard," I said.

"Ah, that's better. Now that we have things clearly understood, you seem a little limp. So I'll just slip next door where I happen to have a prepared bhong, bring it in, light it..."

My head was spinning. What had I done to be punished like this? Factually, after that parade of women in the apartment, I never wanted to see another one again.

She was pushing the bhong mouthpiece between my teeth. "Suck it in, old boy," she said. "Now hold it like I taught you. Now another puff. This is Panama Red and it's pretty jolty. I think I'll have one, too."

She exhaled the smoke into my face.

After a while, she lifted the sheet and looked. "Ah, that's better, Inky."

A puff of marijuana smoke floated upward. Her voice was clear, above the hiss of the sea. "Now, just lie there and I will show you some of the things I learned."

A porthole cover was swinging gently. "There's a certain little muscle that can go round and round...."

A curtain undulated. "Oh, this white slavery is great...."

Another puff of marijuana smoke blew out the port. "Oooooooh! Inky!!!!!"

Now and then, months later, when I had lots of time to think, I would look back on that night and wish forlornly that I had been my usual alert self, for those hours, I am sure, opened the door to all the Hells I was going to walk through afterwards.