Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (7 page)

Sid and Henry were making everybody laugh a great deal. The air was sibilant with the word “police” as the story was repeated to the new arrivals. George was damned if he was going to the police, not for ten times the sum. Their methods were notorious. He had absolutely no grounds for suspecting anybody. His conviction that Sid might have the money was weakening, but he clung to hope. Perhaps they were all in on it and had invented this game as a form of torture before the happy dénouement. Island fun.

“Let’s get
started
,” Sid cried, rocking with glee. “Who’s going to arrest him? I demand that my client be
arrested.
”

“I’m afraid if we ask the police to arrest him, they’d keep him,” Varnum objected.

“The Vigilantes! The Storm Troopers! We’ll knock on his door in the middle of the night!”

Before they could get launched on this new tack, George leaned across the table and addressed Sid directly above the babble of voices. “Listen, chum. This is all good sport, but I’m pretty worried. Don’t you have an idea what happened to the damn money?”

“Me? What are you talking about, comrade?”

“You were there. I thought you might know something about it. I thought you might even have taken it to keep for me.”

“Crazy, man. Why would I do a thing like that? Do you think I want to give you a heart attack? I’d be dead already if I lost that much money.”

“I see.” So much for hope, frail at best. If Charlie and Peter had picked it up, it would have been delivered at the door first thing this morning. That was the way they were. Punctilious. There had been nobody else. Give up. He caught Joe’s eye. “I think maybe I’d better have that talk with Costa after all.” At least it would give him the feeling that he’d done everything he could.

He pushed his chair back and stood up. He was aware of silence falling over the group as he left. He approached Costa from behind under the admiral’s statue and put his hand on his shoulder. Costa looked up and they greeted each other with their eyes.

“Can I speak to you a minute?” George asked. He nodded to the others at the table.

“Sure, Yorgo. Sure.” He rose and followed Leighton a few steps into the shade of an awning. He moved with light gliding grace. He had a northern face, Irish or Breton, with fine features, light hair, humor dancing in pale-blue eyes. When he smiled, his face lighted with elfin charm.

“I need your help,” George began. His heart was playing tricks again under the pressure of his jangled nerves. It was crucially important that he choose the right words if he was to accomplish anything. He was watching Costa closely, trying not to appear to be doing so. “There’ve been a couple of robberies in the last few days. People are beginning to want to do something about it.”

Costa rotated his hand in front of him in a Greek gesture of chastisement. “What do you expect, Yorgo? The kind of people coming here these days.” His English was good, picked up on the docks like everything else he knew.

“Yes, I know, but the way things stand, it looks as if it’s someone we know, someone who knows our houses. All the money I had last night is gone.”

A look of genuine concern crossed Costa’s face and he made a hissing sound between his teeth. “But it was very much. This is bad, Yorgo. You had it with you when you left Stavro’s. I saw it. Surely it is at home somewhere.”

“You saw it? How do you mean?”

“It made a lump—how do you say?—in your pocket.”

“Oh?” Leighton turned this information over in his mind for an instant. His trousers fitted loosely, the pockets were roomy. He could test the story by experimenting with a wad of paper. “Well, that proves what I’m saying. A total stranger couldn’t have found his way around in the house at night without waking somebody up. I thought maybe I’d dropped it after I changed your thousand drachmas.”

“No, I saw it when you left,” Costa repeated. The humor had gone out of his eyes. They were intent and watchful, but friendly.

“All I want is my money back. The same for the others. I thought maybe you could spread the word that if the money’s returned, nothing more will be said about it.”

“How can anybody return the money without making himself to be the thief?”

“I’ve thought of that. Would you be willing to act as go-between? That is, let people know that you’ll return the money, with no questions asked?”

“And make myself to be the thief? No, Yorgo. I cannot do that.”

“This is serious,
Costaiki mou.
If somebody goes to the police and your name is mentioned you’d be in trouble.”

“The police!” He cursed the police with his hand, palm out, fingers extended, pushing at air. “What can the police do for you? And why will my name be mentioned?”

“I don’t like to say this, but it already has. Two of the foreigners think it might’ve been you. I’ve told them it’s impossible.”

“Who says this?” Costa demanded indignantly.

“I can’t say. The point is, they like you. They don’t want to cause trouble.”

“Ah, the foreigners.” He spat the word out. “They are my friends and then if you lose some money, I am getting the blame. I have nothing more to do with the foreigners.”

“Don’t be a fool, Costa. I was just trying to warn you for your own sake.”

“No worry. Costa can take care of himself.” He said it with a swagger, but George could feel him turning dangerous. “The foreigner comes and all he bring is trouble. The drink. The dope. The stealing. All from when the foreigner comes.
I
warn. I warn before. The police maybe arrest that bar boy, Dimitri, Jeff’s friend. You better look if Jeff has nothing in the house is bad for him.”

“What in hell are you talking about?” George demanded, unprepared for what seemed a new unrelated element in the conversation.

“I talk about the dope. It is expensive. Where do they all get the money?”

“Are you suggesting that Jeff takes dope?”

“Not just Jeff. If the police they come for me, I must tell all I know. Jeff. Your friends, many of them. If money is stolen, it is for dope.”

Leighton couldn’t speak for a moment, sickened with himself and Costa. They had exchanged their threats, defined the area in which each could hurt the other, banished friendship. For what? For money. Shaken by being included in a blanket condemnation of the foreigners, he was tempted to put his hand out and touch Costa’s shoulder in a gesture of conciliation but he checked himself. He was just beginning to digest the clear hint of blackmail in what Costa had said: if George made trouble about the money, Costa would make trouble for Jeff. All his carefully suppressed suspicions came rushing to the surface. Why had only Costa seen the bulge in his pocket? Very convenient. He didn’t want to go to the police, but he wouldn’t allow his right to do so to be challenged. He couldn’t afford the luxury of conciliation. He had to get his money back.

“You don’t leave me much choice,” he said, drawing on all his strength to meet Costa on his own terms. “I think this had better be cleared up. I’ll go to the police at six this evening. If you can help me get my money back in the meantime, meet me there. That’ll be the end of it. Otherwise——” He shrugged away the shreds of his scruples.

“Yes. Sure. What is Costa next to Mr. Yorgo? The foreigner speak and—hup.” Costa joined his wrists together as if they were manacled. Because the gesture illustrated an ugly truth, George was swept by anger. He wanted to seize Costa and shake him until the money dropped out of him and bring an end to this nasty incident. Instead, he turned abruptly and went back to his table. Peter and Martha had joined it. He pulled his chair around so that he could sit beside them.

In his sweet solicitous way, Peter was the first of George’s friends to make him feel that his loss mattered. “This is a hell of a thing, George,” he said, his clear, extraordinarily direct blue eyes full of concern. “I’ve just heard about it. What lousy luck. I just want to say, don’t hesitate, if you know what I mean.”

“Thanks, friend. I may have to take you up on that.” George put a hand on Peter’s bare arm and gave it a squeeze. He had never been one for such intimate contacts, but he was aware that he liked to touch Peter. He was so completely pleasing physically. He supposed that in some obscure bisexual corner of himself, he was a bit in love with him. He removed his hand.

“Henry says you’re going to the police,” Martha said. “Have you anything to go on?”

“I don’t know what Henry knows about it. I hadn’t intended going to the police, but I’ve just had a very peculiar talk with Costa.”

“He’s not involved in this,” Peter asserted as firmly as George had earlier. Costa was a friend and a semi-employee of the Mills-Martins; they had an arrangement whereby his boat was always at their disposal when they were here.

“I don’t know, Peter,” George said, running his hand agitatedly through his hair. “He as much as said that if I go to the police, he’ll bust open the drug trade here and implicate Jeff. Why would he say a thing like that unless maybe he did take my money?”

Peter frowned. “That doesn’t sound like him. Can you tell me how he put it? His English sometimes goes a bit haywire.”

“He said, ‘I warn you. I warned you before.’ And then a lot about Jeff, and Dimitri at the bar, and all the people who use dope here.” George saw Sid Coleman’s powerful leonine profile swing toward him and he was struck by his urgency when he leaned forward to speak through the buzz of conversation around them.

“Hey, now wait a minute. Now listen, George. Don’t talk so loud. And don’t start something you won’t want to finish. Jeff’s clean. You can take my word for it. I happen to know these things. Don’t fool around with Dimitri. Dimitri’s all right.”

“Blast Dimitri,” George said heatedly. “I don’t give a damn about him. Costa brought him up. Costa’s acting damn suspiciously.”

“Just remember,” Peter interjected, “if you go to the police, they’re going to insist on your accusing somebody. That’s the way they operate.”

“Well, I
can’t
accuse anybody. Joe and Henry say they’re sure it’s Costa, but I’m not sure of anything. He just told me he saw the money in my pocket when I left last night. I’ll check that when I go home. If a wad of paper doesn’t show in the trousers I was wearing, I really will suspect him.”

“He’s been to jail before, you know,” Peter persisted.

“I’ve heard some story. What was it all about?”

“He tells various versions. You know the way he is. I think all it amounts to is that when he was a kid just after the war he took to stealing to stay alive and got caught. The point is, the law here is tough on second offenders. He’s told me himself he could get ten years with only a token trial.”

George nodded. “Point taken. What would you do if you were in my position?”

They looked at each other for a moment with affectionate concern. George was only a few years older, but Peter looked almost young enough to be his son. Nevertheless, he had an air of authority that commanded George’s respect. George waited for an answer, prepared to be guided by it.

“It’s a tough one, George. I understand that. Try the test with your trousers. It’s too much money for anybody but a real crook to take. That’s what bothers me. I’d better have a talk with Costa.” Peter glanced over toward the admiral’s statue where he had seen him with George. He wasn’t there.

“I wish you would,” George was saying. “You know I hate having anything to do with the police. In a reasonable society——” He paused, aware that the man from the telegraph office was hovering behind him, and looked up.

“
Here
you are Mr. Yorgo,” the man said. “I think I have something for you.” He fumbled with his pouch and began to go painstakingly through its contents. Eventually, he extracted a telegram and presented his book for signature. Christ, now what? George thought. His mother? His father? Signing, he had difficulty controlling the trembling of his hand. He took the telegram and tore it open savagely.

ARRIVING TOMORROW FOR DAY WITH LEIGHTON ARRANGE BOOKISH RECEPTION TRAVELING INCOGNITO NO PRESS PLEASE COCHRAN

George stared at this odd communication for some seconds before his mind grasped it. Cochran. Mike Cochran. Could it possibly be? The rich, the successful, the celebrated Michael Cochran? He knew no other Cochran. Old Mike, his classmate and bosom pal, turned playwright, screen writer, the familiar of presidents, princes, and the big guns of international celebrity. With the caution of experience, he hastily checked the date on the message. The seventeenth. He looked up at the assembly around the table.

“Does anybody know the date today?” he asked.

“It’s the sixteenth, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s later than that. The eighteenth, I think.”

“Isn’t today Thursday?”

“That’s not a date, you cretin.”

“I can tell you exactly,” Peter said after a moment’s thought. “Sunday was the fifteenth. It’s Wednesday, the eighteenth.”

Naturally, George thought. Why shouldn’t a telegram take twenty-four hours to travel forty miles? Then “tomorrow” was today and Mike would be here in less than an hour. He couldn’t believe it. Jesus Christ, after all these years. His mind tried to fix a picture of his friend as he had been when they had last seen each other—twelve years ago?—but he caught only a glimpse of a presence adorned with a few physical details—a lank lock of hair, a tough farm boy’s frame, a tone of voice, witty and sardonic. He experimented with amendments dictated by the passage of time—the lock thin and graying?—the frame padded out with paunch?—but it was as unconvincing as mustaches scrawled on the picture of a pretty girl in the subway. There was success, big sustained worldly success, as well as time to reckon with—success and money. He folded the telegram and put it in a pocket.

“I think Mike Cochran’s coming on the morning boat,” he announced.

“Michael Cochran!” Varnum exclaimed. “Crickey. The island’s coming up in the world. I read he was in Athens on some cultural thing.”

“Really? That explains it.” George beamed happily in a way that had become so unfamiliar that it made his face feel uncomfortable. Mike would take his mind off his money for a while; there was nothing he could do about it till evening, anyway.