Big Kiss-Off (16 page)

He drank from the spring and stood up.

Mimi stood up with him. “Now we are going to the lodge?”

Cade nodded. “Yes. But not to kill Moran.”

“No?”

“No. I’m going to try to steal a boat and get you to Grand Isle.”

“But you said Jeem’s men would catch us before we ’ave gone two miles.”

“Possibly not at night.”

Cade led the way back to the shore. It was completely dark now and the water was slightly phosphorescent wherever it was broken. The power plant at the lodge had resumed its monotonous
thud thud
. The high-watt bulb on the pier head was lighted. He could see it through the trees on the next spit of land. Whatever he did he would have to do before the moon rose.

Mimi’s fingers bit into Cade’s forearm in sudden comprehension. “You are doing this for me.”

“Let’s say for both of us.”

“You are afraid something bad will happen to me.”

“Moran hasn’t had his men searching the Bay all day because he wants to hold your hand.”

“No,” Mimi agreed with him. “I should nevair ’ave come to the States. I should nevair ’ave stowed away in La Guaira.”

Cade squeezed the hand on his arm. “If you hadn’t, I’d still be back on that island, possibly snake bit or ’gator bait by now.”

Mimi shook her head. “No. You would still be in Bay Parish an’ everything would be fine for you. The law would know by now that you deed not keel Señor Laval. It was because I insisted on finding Jeem, insisted you take me to New Orleans, that you are in all thees trouble.”

Cade studied the pole he’d left lying across the stern thwarts of the boat. “That’s water over the dam.”

“Water over the dam?”

“Spilled milk.”

“Thees I do not know.”

Cade continued to study the pole. It would be useless in the basin in front of the lodge. The water in the basin was at least six fathoms deep almost all the way to the shore, another reason why the big firms might be interested in the land. “Over and done with,” he told Mimi. “You got mixed up with a heel. I married a sex-propelled cash register. The best we can do is forget the whole affair and get out of this with as much skin as we can.”

“But ees your property.”

“I’ll live. That is, if I’m not executed for killing Joe Laval.”

Cade walked back the way they had come, tore a four-foot piece of twelve-inch clapboard off the shack and shaped a rough paddle with the dull axe-head.

There were luminous eyes around the spring now, as the night things of the swamp and hammock began to stir. As he worked, he heard a thrashing in the underbrush as some wild thing made its kill and once a dry slithering whisper as a snake crawled through the grass.

There were things to be said for flying an F-86. The worst that could happen to you was for a Gook to lob a .37 shell into your cockpit, or forget to turn off the emergency fuel system after you took off and have the pump accidentally kick on and the excess fuel pouring into the engine literally burn you alive. Either way was quick. The Delta and the creatures in it, human and otherwise, worried a man to death.

Mimi was sullen-eyed when he returned. “No,” she said.

“No what?” Cade asked her.

“You ’ave your pride,” she said. “You are doing thees as you ’ave done everything else, for me.”

Cade lost his temper. “Goddamn it, get into the boat.”

Mimi’s lower lip trembled. For a moment Cade thought she was going to cry. She didn’t. “Whatever you say,” she said, with simple dignity. “You are the man.”

Cade poled along the shore and out to the extremity of the next spit of land. The basin lay just beyond it. The pier looked the same as it had the night before but the cutter was gone. The three work boats and the
Sea Bird
were still in their slips. The men who had used the
Sea Bird
to look for Mimi had had to gas the boat. If he and Mimi could get aboard the cruiser undetected, what he hoped to do would not only be feasible, it would be relatively simple. The
Sea Bird
could run away from any of the other three boats.

Cade looked from the pier to the lodge. However the fight had ended, it was over. The helicopter was gone from the landing strip. A half-dozen of the rooms on the first floor of the lodge, as well as the dining room and the lobby were brightly lighted. He could see no one on the pier or on the beach. As on the night before, the only sounds in the basin were the lapping of water on the shore, the shrilling of the cicadas, the booming of frogs and the
thud thud
of the plant powering the lights.

“What are you going to do?” Mimi whispered.

Cade told her. “Steal my own boat, if I can.”

He poled away from the shore and was almost immediately in deep water. Cade let the pole slip from his bleeding palms and picked up the crude paddle he’d hewn. The wind was off-shore and brisk. It was as difficult to paddle the flat-bottomed skiff as it had been to pole it. No matter on which side he paddled it yawed off course. The distance from the point of land at which he’d started to the end of the pier was less than half a mile. Cade was breathless and drenched with sweat. Over an hour passed before he could reach out and catch a breather by holding on to the creosoted pilings. As new as it was, barnacles had already begun to form. The fresh creosote burned his raw palms. The skiff thudding against the pilings was even more difficult to handle in the chop under the pier than it had been in open water.

Laboriously, Cade made his way inshore until he could grasp one of the sagging ropes that moored the
Sea Bird
.

The men who had used it hadn’t bothered to put out the fenders and there was a nasty scar to starboard where the cruiser had rubbed against the lee aft piling.

He pulled the skiff under the transom and held it as steady as he could while Mimi scrambled aboard. Then he followed her, casting the skiff adrift.

The skiff drifted out into the bay. From time to time the off-shore wind carried a burst of laughter from the screened dining-room windows of the lodge. Once Cade thought he heard Janice laughing. He stood a moment panting in the dark, squeegeeing the sweat from his face and chest, then checked the controls by feel. Everything seemed to be in order.

He cast off the slack aft line and hauled it in, then waited for the cruiser to yaw and cast off the line to lee.

“What can I do?” Mimi whispered.

“Nothing,” Cade whispered tersely. “I’m going to play it out between the pilings if I can and let the tide and the wind carry us out into the bay before I cut in the motors. Because the minute I do, all hell is apt to pop.”

He scrambled up on the catwalk and moved forward, wishing it weren’t quite so dark. It was like trying to see through a solid black wall.

The tide was out and the cruiser was riding three feet lower than the pier. Cade reached up through the dark to locate the bight making it fast and a strong hand grasped his arm and lifted him up onto the pier as easily as he might have lifted a bottle.

His pinhead bobbling, his thin voice shrill with excitement, the Squid said, “It’s you. It’s you I bin watchin’ for an hour. They said you was dead but you ain’t. You come back, didn’t you, Cade? Back to the Squid.”

Cade stood limp, depleted, beaten. He’d come to the end of his stick and there was no silk to hit.

Mimi scrambled up on the pier beside them and beat at the Squid with her small fists. “You leave him alone.”

The Squid used his free hand to hold her. “An’ you’re the girl who ran away.” The Squid was well pleased with the Squid. “Tocko is goin’ t’ like this. Maybe now Joe is gone he’ll even make me sheriff.”

Mimi bit the hand holding her and the Squid squealed shrilly. “Do it again, huh?” he pleaded. “I like that.”

The big man walked Cade and Mimi down the pier. It was useless to try to hold back. It was like being towed by a drag-line. Mimi continued to scream and fight. Cade walked stiff-kneed, beaten. He’d done his best and it hadn’t been good enough.

As they reached the patch of loose sand the screen door of the lodge opened and a man called, “What the hell’s going on down there?”

“I got the girl who run away,” the Squid called back. “Her an’ Cade come sneaking back, a-paddlin’ in a skiff. Tried to steal his boat.”

The wind whipped away most of his words.

“Who?” the man called. “Who did you say came back?”

“Cade,” the Squid shouted. “You know. The guy Moran said was dead. Cade Cain. The guy who killed Joe Laval.”

The dining room seemed filled with men. There were at least a dozen at three tables shoved together in the center of the room. A half-dozen more were grouped at a table in the corner. These glanced up apprehensively as the Squid pushed Cade and Mimi into the room ahead of him.

The big room was fogged with smoke. The tables were littered with scraps of food and empty dishes and partially filled bottles. All of the men were in their shirt sleeves. Most were wearing guns. All of them turned and looked at him and Mimi. Two of the men stood up.

They would be Fred and Roy, Cade decided. He looked for Janice and found her. She and Tocko and Moran were sitting at the same table that she and he and Moran and Mimi had occupied the night before. From the look on Moran’s face and the way Janice was fondling Tocko’s over-plump white hand, his former wife had changed sides and beds again.

The Squid pushed him up to the table and looked accusingly at Moran. “Ya didn’t tell us the truth. Cade ain’t dead at all. Him an’ the girl come paddling up t’ the pier jist as alive as could be, usin’ a piece of board for a paddle. They was atryin’ t’ steal his boat when I caught ’em.”

Tocko got to his feet and looked across the table at Moran. “I thought you said Cade was dead.”

One of the two men standing at the other table said, “Goddamn, he has to be. He was out cold when we dropped him in the mouth of the pass. He should be thirty miles out in the Gulf by now.”

Tocko continued to look at Moran.

Moran spread his hands. “You heard what Roy just said.”

Janice brushed the ash from the tip of her cigarette. There was begrudged admiration in her voice. “You’re a hard man to kill, Cade.”

His feeling of weakness and depletion passed, Cade rested his hands on the back of an unoccupied chair. “You might try loving me to death. You did a pretty good job last night.”

“You seemed to like it.”

“A man who’s just spent two years in a Commie prison isn’t exactly a connoisseur.”

Janice flushed angrily but made no answer.

Cade studied the deeply tanned faces watching him. “Just what is this, a love feast?”

“I guess you could call it that,” Moran said. “Although I can’t say I enjoyed my food.”

“It would seem you lost.”

Moran sipped at the drink in front of him. “So it would seem.”

Tocko sat back in his chair and looked at the Squid. “Is there anyone on the pier?”

The Squid shook his head. “Naw.”

Tocko glanced at the six men sitting by themselves.

“Then you’d better get back. Right at the moment it could be very embarrassing if Lieutenant Peyton or one of the other Coast Guard officers should take a notion to drop in unexpectedly to see how Mrs. Cain is getting along with her new resort.”

“Sure,” the Squid said. “Sure. But I done good, didn’t I, Mr. Kalavitch?”

“You did fine,” Tocko assured him.

Janice watched the Squid leave the room. “Ugh. He gives me the creeps. Why do you keep that thing on your payroll?”

“He’s useful,” Tocko said. “Just as Joe Laval was useful.” He looked reproachfully at Cade. “You shouldn’t have shot Joe, Cade.”

Cade shook his head. “I didn’t.”

Tocko studied his face for a long time. “I believe you.” He looked from Cade to Moran. “So shooting Joe was more of your work.”

Moran palmed a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. “Prove it.”

Tocko shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. But the picture is beginning to clear. Joe was taking money from both of us. It was you who told him to order Cade off the river. For that I got a punch in the jaw. Then when Cade didn’t frighten, you were afraid he might look up Janice and interrupt your ill-advised idyll, so you killed Joe aboard Cade’s boat, hoping the law would relieve you of one of your minor problems.”

“Prove it,” Moran repeated.

The fat man shrugged. “As I said, it is immaterial.” He asked one of the men at the big table to bring over another chair and offered it to Mimi. “Do sit down, my dear. I tried my best to help you. I didn’t want you involved in this. You see, I happen to know Moran wasn’t legally married to you. That is why I reported you to Immigration, hoping they would deport you before you became mixed up in this mess.”

Mimi sat looking at Janice. Her eyes were sullen and slitted.
“Gracias.”

Tocko returned his attention to Cade. “And you, Cade. You look like you’ve had a rough time of it. I’m afraid you’re in for an even rougher one. But there is no need for us to be ungentlemanly about it. Sit down. Have a drink.”

Cade paid Tocko the same begrudged admiration Janice had shown him. Tocko had grown. He was no longer that Kalavitch boy. He’d parlayed guts and shrewdness and an utter contempt for the law into big business.

The fat man poured four fingers of whiskey into a clean glass. “Your chief failing, as I see it, is in not being a good judge of wives.” He patted Janice’s hand. “She is smart, this one. As our Greek friends would say, she can nail a horseshoe on a fly. Her selling me the acreage after her power of attorney had been nullified by the final decree of divorce was very shrewd.”

Cade tasted the whiskey in his glass. It tasted good. “Then I still legally own the land?”

“That would seem to be the crux of the matter.” Tocko smiled. “But there is also the will you entrusted to Janice, leaving everything ’of which I die possessed, real and personal, to my beloved wife, Janice Cain’.”

“The divorce also nullified that.”

“True, but as there are no other heirs and as several prominent local politicians have already been promised a cut of the spoils, I doubt if there will be any official investigation into just when you died. Officially you never reached Bay Parish.”