Big Kiss-Off (12 page)

The youth laid down the reel and looked at Cade’s white captain’s cap. “I thought I heard a boat put in. Don’t tell me you came down from the city in the dark?”

Cade shook his head. “No. Up from Southwest Pass.”

“That’s an even tougher haul. You must know these waters.”

“I do.”

The youth fumbled under the desk and found a registration card. “Well, we aren’t really open yet but I think we can take care of you. A room for you and the missus? Or do you want one of the private cottages?”

“Neither,” Cade said. He leaned an elbow on the desk. It was an effort for him to use the name. “Mrs. Cain is here?”

“Yes, sir, she is.”

“Could I see her?” It was more of a statement than a question.

“I don’t see why not.”

Mimi asked, almost shyly, “And Mr. James Moran? He, too, is here?”

The youth back of the desk looked puzzled. “Yeah. Sure. They’re both here. They came down a few days ago to get the place ready for the grand opening next week. Who shall I say wants to see them?”

He turned as the door behind the desk opened and a striking girl wearing horn-rimmed harlequin glasses emerged carrying a handful of papers.

“These reservations, John — ” she began, then used her free hand to rip off her glasses and stared at the couple in front of the desk. “Cade. Cade, darling,” she screamed. “You’re home!”

Cade instinctively sucked in his breath. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. Janice hadn’t changed. Her hair was still the color of ripe wheat. Her green-gray eyes were wide set and intelligent. The high, firm, peaked breasts he’d dreamed of in Pyongyang still strained against the bodice of the smartly simple cotton dress she was wearing. Neither Tocko nor Moran showed. Her deep tan was becoming. It made her face look even younger than he remembered it, almost virginal.

The papers flew one way, the glasses another, as she rushed into his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, my darling, my darling.”

Cade felt like a goddamn fool. He stood mute, motionless, embarrassed, holding the familiar body lightly. It wasn’t the reception he’d expected. Janice wasn’t afraid of him. She seemed genuinely glad to see him.

Janice pressed her lips to his and talked into his mouth. “Then you did get my letters and my cable.”

Cade felt even more like a fool. “No,” he said, flatly. He tilted the girl’s saucy chin with a crooked forefinger. “Why so glad to see the returned hero? I thought you divorced me.”

Janice brushed the divorce aside as immaterial. “Oh, that,” she said, lightly. “I can explain that.” Her lower lip quivered. Her green-gray eyes filled with tears. “Well, aren’t you going to kiss me? Aren’t you glad to see
me?
”

Cade decided he didn’t like Moran. The big man smiled too much. He showed too many teeth when he smiled. He was too glib, too hail-fellow-well-met. And Cade didn’t like the way he looked at Mimi. He’d met men like Moran before. There was nothing of which the big black Irishman wouldn’t be capable.

Cade looked across the littered table at Mimi. Mimi had drunk too much wine. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. She sat looking at the face of the man beside her like a small white kitten fascinated by a big sleek torn.

Janice had finished her meal, and now was saying, “I know how it must have looked to you, Cade. But think of the spot I was in. To all intents and purposes, except legally, you were dead.”

“So you divorced me.”

Janice played with his fingers. “All right. So I made a mistake. But at the time, nothing mattered. I thought I’d lost you forever.” She was frank. “I had myself to look out for.”

“So you came back to Bay Parish and sold my property to Tocko Kalavitch.”

“I sold the house.”

“He lies,” Moran said. “That’s one of the reasons I broke up with Tocko.”

“Why?”

“Because he was trying to push Janice around. His only claim to the property is pre-emption. You see, as soon as he heard you’d been shot down he moved right in and built this lodge, figuring no one would ever call him.”

“For what purpose?” Cade asked. “I mean, why did he build it?”

Moran was apparently as frank as Janice had been. “As a drop for aliens.” He lighted a Turkish cigarette. “Oh, not your run-of-the-deck five-hundred-dollar a head wetbacks but the big shots who had to get out of where they were. Men who could afford to pay through the nose. Big shots, for instance, who’d bucked even bigger shots behind the Iron Curtain. Men for whom the MVD were looking.”

“MVD?” Mimi hiccuped.

“Russian secret police,” Cade explained. “Short for Ministry of the Interior, formerly NKVD,
Narodny Kommissar Vnutrenych Del
or People’s Commissariat for the Interior.”

Moran laughed easily. “You seem to know.”

“I just spent some time north of the Yalu,” Cade replied dryly.

Moran went on, “Anyway, he started pushing Janice around. I wasn’t too happy in what I was doing. So when she came up with the idea of making a swank hideaway of this place and offered me a cut if I’d help get it started, I jumped at the chance.” He patted Mimi’s hand. “What the hell? I’m no angel but then I’m not a complete heel and some of Tocko’s business methods gagged me.”

Cade drank the dregs of his highball. “Such as?”

Moran met his eyes. “Such as six guys one of his boats brought in and because a Coast Guard cutter was getting too close, he dropped them off on big south mud lump. That way the respectable shrimp fleet owner, Tocko Kalavitch, wouldn’t have to take a fall.” Moran added virtuously, “At least, when I was flying guys in from Martinique and Caracas, I fulfilled my contract. I set them ashore on the mainland.”

Janice snuggled even closer to Cade. “Then, when I heard you’d been released, I wrote right away and I cabled. I even called Tokyo, long distance, but your old wing commander said you’d been flown to Hawaii and from there to the States.” She smiled. “But I knew that sooner or later my letters or my cable would catch up with you. And all the time we were in New Orleans, at a flea bag called the Royal Crescent, arranging for publicity, and a charter for Jim to fly patrons down here, and soliciting political support, in case Tocko tried to make trouble — well, I expected the phone to ring any minute and you to say you were down in the lobby. I left a forwarding address at the post office. So did Jim.”

“I see,” Cade said.

It was a smooth, plausible story, the type of half-truth that Janice would concoct. He wondered if she thought he would believe her and how far she would go in her attempt to make her story stand up.

Moran tried to refill Mimi’s glass. She shook her head. “No, thank you. I ’ave plenty.” He brushed her hair with his lips. “The whole thing has been a tragic mix-up but I see how it happened now, at least, as far as Mimi and I are concerned.”

Mimi looked less like a little white kitten than she had. “How?” she asked flatly.

“You addressed your letters to me in care of Tocko, didn’t you?”

“In care of Mr. Kalavitch, Bay Parish, Louisiana.”

“And there you are. If you’ll pardon the expression, the louse never turned them over to me. And that old witch of a postmistress is just as bad. Probably because Tocko paid her not to, she never sent out my letters to you.”

Mimi’s accent became more pronounced. “Then you deed write?”

“Every week. I even sent you passage money to join me, three hundred and twenty-five dollars.” Moran lit a cigarette from the stub of the one he was smoking. “Maybe we can sue the old bag for interfering with the mail or destroying money orders.”

Cade wondered if Mimi believed Moran. It was hard to tell. Her big eyes gave no clue to the way the wheels in her mind were turning.

Janice pushed her chair back from the table. “It’s getting late.” She stroked the back of Cade’s hand with her fingers. “I know that Jim and Mimi want to be alone.” She bent and kissed Cade’s cheek. “And it’s been more than two years since I’ve seen you, darling. We can talk this all out in the morning. I’m only glad it’s turned out the way it has.”

Moran smoothly helped Mimi to her feet. “Come on, darling. I guess we can take a hint.”

Mimi stood, swaying slightly, her eyes searching Moran’s face. “You are certain you wrote me? You are certain you sent me the passage?”

Moran kissed the tip of her nose. “Of course. And I can tell you I was plenty hurt when I didn’t hear from you.”

Janice laughed. “Hurt? The man was furious. He thought one of two things had happened. Either your family forced you to annul the marriage and wouldn’t even let you answer his letters or you’d met one of your own countrymen you liked better than you did him.”

“Oh,” Mimi said. The word could mean anything. Her eyes still uncertain, glancing at Cade from time to time, almost as if she expected him to stop them, she allowed Moran to propel her across the floor of the dining room.

Janice linked her arm through one of Cade’s and followed them. “The hell with the dishes. The full staff won’t be down until Thursday but there’s a girl who lives back in the swamp who comes in every day.”

The wood-paneled lobby was deserted. The reel was still on the counter but the youth Cade had seen behind the desk was gone. Here the night noises of the swamp and the
thud thud
of the gasoline power plant were more pronounced than they had been in the dining room. A long, dimly lighted hall led to the rear of the building. Beside the entrance to the hall a stairway led up to a balcony and rooms on the second floor.

Moran locked the front door of the lodge, while Janice turned out most of the lights.

And so to bed
, Cade thought. Both Moran and Janice had lied about one thing. They were more than business partners. They were two of a kind and they worked very well together. Smooth. Like the flesh on the inside of a woman’s thigh, Cade told himself.

Finished with locking the front door, Moran took Mimi’s arm again and walked her toward the hall. “Well, see you both in the morning.”

“In the morning,” Janice said. She stood, with one hand on the rail of the stairs leading to the upper floor. “Goodnight.”

A few feet down the hall, Mimi turned. “Good night, Cade,” she said, softly. “Thank you for being so kind. You are, as we say, true
caballero
.”

Cade wished he could see her face.

“Sure,” Moran said, soberly. “I owe you a lot, fellow. And I’ll make it right with you, too.” He opened one of the doors in the hall, stood aside to allow Mimi to pass him, then closed the door quietly behind them.

“My room is upstairs,” Janice said.

Cade realized a lump had formed in his throat. He followed Janice up the stairs and waited while she unlocked the door of a room opening off the balcony, still wondering how far she intended to go to make her fantastic story stand up.

As Janice lighted a bed lamp made from a polished cypress knee, she smiled. “This was to have been one of the guest rooms, at twenty-five dollars a day. But now that you’re home, we’ll keep it for ourselves.” Janice switched on another lamp, on the dressing table. “You came by boat, honey?”

“That’s right.”

“Your own?”

“A thirty-eight foot twin-screw job that I bought in Corpus.”

“How wonderful,” Janice enthused. “That gives us another guide boat.” She patted his cheek. “And a good man to handle it. You should see the reservations, darling. We’re booked practically solid for the season. And why shouldn’t we be? This will be the only resort of its kind, the best fishing and swimming in the world, the utmost in privacy with no questions asked. And only a few minutes by air from New Orleans.”

Cade continued to study the room. It was entirely feminine. The bedspread was pastel silk. So were the drapes on the windows. The open closet door revealed only dresses. If Moran had shared the room with Janice, there were no visible signs of his occupancy.

Cade walked to the screened window and looked out. Night lay dark and heavy on the Bay. The moon was waning. The stars seemed less bright. The only light was the bulb on the pier. Even at the distance, he could see the
Sea Bird
tugging at her mooring ropes and, beyond her, the dark bulk of the cutter.

“Who owns the cutter?” he asked.

“The contractor who’s building the pier,” Janice said. “His men are living aboard.”

Cade wondered how big a fool Janice thought he was. A contractor wouldn’t use a cutter. He’d use a tug and a barge. Something more than renting luxury rooms to amorous businessmen with attractive secretaries and a secondary desire to fish was being planned for the lodge. Well, he’d wanted a showdown with Janice — and here he was.

As Cade turned from the window he realized he was still carrying his cap. He hung it on the back of a chair. Janice kicked off her shoes and, sitting on the bench in front of the dressing table, began to comb her hair, smiling at him in the mirror between strokes.

The lump in Cade’s throat dissolved. His knees were suddenly weak. The whole scene was fantastic. It was exactly as he had dreamed it would be, only grotesquely distorted and somehow sordid.

Janice met his eyes in the mirror and stopped smiling. “You’re still angry with me, aren’t you, darling?”

Cade was frank. “I don’t know what to think.”

“You’ve been listening to the nasty narrow little minds in Bay Parish.”

“Among other things.”

“What things?”

“After all, you did divorce me.”

“I thought I explained that.”

“You might have waited.”

Janice nodded. “Yes. I should have known better. I see now I was wrong. But at the time it seemed the logical thing to do.”

“What beats me is how you managed it,” he said. “You had no real grounds, here or in any other state. And all the courts were turning thumbs down on proceedings against G.I.’s in combat abroad.”

“I didn’t get the divorce in this state, but it was the pollys here who fixed it for me through their connections. I told you — I’m pretty thick with them. I have been for some time.”

“So is Tocko, I bet,” growled Cade.

It was hot and close in the room. The gun in Cade’s pocket felt too heavy.