Key West Connection (15 page)

I had grinned and stuck out my hand. We shook like two businessmen. “Till death do us part, sweet cheeks.”

Till death do us part. . . .

And that's the way I awoke now. Janet, dear Janet, was suddenly in my arms, our mouths joined. I was so happy; so happy in my wonderful disbelief. It was she. Really Janet. I felt her lips trace the line of my neck, down my chest to my thighs. I felt the lovely rounded hips, the sharp cones of breast as she went. Her short, close-cropped hair was soft against my stomach. And then . . . then I knew.

“What! Hey!” I sat bolt upright.

The ebony woman lay naked upon me, breasts mashed flat against my thighs, kissing me passionately.

With a sweep of my leg, I knocked her off, onto the floor.

“What in the hell do you think you're doing?”

She looked up at me, her face quivering. “I just thought—”

“Isn't that Senator of yours taking care of you?”

She reached up and touched my arm and started to cry, weeping softly, trembling.

“I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. For the last three days I've heard you crying out for her. I've heard you over and over again. And tonight . . . tonight, I just couldn't stand it any longer. I thought that if I tried, if I
did,
and you didn't wake up, that it might help you, captain. And it was good for you; good until you finally woke up. I'm sorry. I just thought . . . ”

Her words were lost amid the soft roll of sobs.

I reached up and wiped the sweat off my face. I still had my Rolex. Two o'clock. Morning or afternoon?

“Bimini. That is your name, isn't it?”

She nodded. I pulled her up onto the bed with me, letting her tears stream down my chest. “Bimini, you've been very kind to me. And I appreciate it. You didn't deserve to be treated the way I just treated you. I'm very sorry. But I just couldn't. I can't.”

I felt her naked breasts heave against me as she cried. I felt the damp heat of her thighs on my leg. She pressed herself tightly against me.

“You can't keep holding onto her forever, captain. She's gone.”

Bimini lifted her autumn-colored face and looked into my eyes. Gently, she brushed her lips with mine. I felt myself stir. And she felt it, too. She took me in her small hand, stroking me, then kissed me again, her soft tongue searching.

For a moment, one explosive instant, I gave in. My body wanted to. My body wanted her very badly. But I couldn't. Not then, not tomorrow, maybe never. I took both her wrists and pulled her away.

“You are a very beautiful woman, Bimini. There is not a man on earth who wouldn't agree. But it's too soon. I loved her too much.”

She sighed a soft, sad sigh.

“I wanted you to have something nice. After all this time, you see, I feel as if I know you. I've cared for you and tended to you, and listened to your awful dreams. In a strange way, I have come to love you. And I just wanted to do this . . . this good thing for you before they came.”

“They? For what, Bimini?”

“Captain MacMorgan, in less than an hour, they are coming to carry you out to sea and kill you.”

She didn't bother putting her own clothes on before she helped me get dressed. With her she had brought the Navy sweater, the Limey pants and, best of all, my Randall knife.

As she handed it to me, she eyed me steadily, then spoke in her soft West Indies accent:

“Captain, if they find this knife on you, and you do not kill them all, then they will come and kill me. They will know.”

I balanced the cold weight of the knife in my hand. Though weak and shaky, I felt better. But strong enough to fight my way out? I didn't know. I decided I couldn't take the chance. I tried to hand the knife back to her.

“Bimini, put this back where you found it. I don't think I'll need it, and I'm not going to take the chance of getting you killed, too. Once on the boat—if I pretend that I am still in a coma—I should be able to think of something. I should be able to find a way to escape. But even if I can't, I'm not going to have us both getting killed.”

I was trying to get the last two buttons of my pants buttoned. My hands wouldn't work right. My fingers felt as if they had minds of their own. I watched her step toward me in the soft light of the nearby desk lamp: tall cocoa-colored beauty with taut proud body. She pushed the knife away, then pushed my hands away. Gently, she reached her hands down into my pants and nimbly did the last two buttons, and finished by giving me a soft squeeze.

“Why do you fight yourself so, captain?”

“What does that have to do with the knife?”

“I brought the knife for you. I would rather die than to know there was no one to rescue me from this terrible place. I will not fight myself, captain. Not now. Not ever again.”

Her face was still flushed from crying, and her dark eyes were resolute. She pulled herself against me, hugging me warmly. She was trembling. “You are a very attractive man, captain. The most attractive man I have seen in too, too long. Is it wrong of me to say that I want you?”

“My God, Bimini, they'll be coming before long.”

She sighed. “I can see that your body wants me, too, but . . . ”

I pulled her to me, kissed her, touched her breasts gently, then swung her around and sat her down on the bed.

“Now listen, you crazy woman!”

She smiled vampishly. “All right, all right! Maybe not now, but someday, sometime, I will have you!”

I rubbed her head good-naturedly. “Maybe. Someday. If I live, goddammit. How many of them will there be? Do you know?”

She reached over and pulled a long, loose-fitting blue cotton dress down over her head. “I'm not sure. The Senator has sent for many men to come. He wants to dismantle much of this place and load it onto boats. He suspects the American government is after him. He has connections in a South American country—I am not sure which one. He is an important man and knows many people. He plans to go there. They have promised him political sanctuary. He wants to take me with him.” In a burst of emotion, she clubbed herself on the thigh with a dark fist. “I would die first! I would rather die!”

“His men, Bimini—who are they? Where do they come from?”

She relaxed somewhat and settled back on the bed. “It is as if he has his own small army. Men from Cuba, Haiti, America—many men, black and white. He does things for them; he gets them out of jail or makes it possible for them to come to this country. And once they are in his debt, the Senator makes them work for him. You don't know him, captain. He is a very big man, a very powerful man.”

I tried to match the man she told me about with the voice I had heard that night when I put the little bug into the flower vase. A harsh, masculine voice. A bawdy laugh, rich with self-importance.

“How does Ellsworth fit in, Bimini?”

“Ellsworth! Oh, how I hate that man!” Her dark eyes were fierce. “He says things to me—vile things. And when the Senator is not looking, he touches me. Once I slapped him, and he put a knife to my neck. He made me get down on my knees. He enjoyed it. Oh, how that awful man enjoyed forcing me. He made me . . . made me . . . ”

“I know what he made you do, Bimini. And the Senator didn't mind?”

“Had I told him, he would have killed Ellsworth—even though Ellsworth runs his drug operation. And then he would have killed me! The Senator, he is so jealous. Yes, he would have certainly killed us both.”

“What about Lenze, Bimini? I heard his name mentioned when they thought I was asleep. How does he fit in?”

She paused for a moment, reflecting. “He is the frail little man? Yes? I'm not sure what his position is.”

“He supposedly works for the federal government as a special drug investigator.”

She tossed her head back and laughed softly. “That little man? He is so frightened of the Senator that he actually jumps when the Senator speaks. If he is with the American government, then the Senator truly has nothing to worry about.”

I checked my watch. Two twenty-five. It had to be very early morning. They would not take me out to sea and kill me in the daylight. I got up and went to the door, testing it.

“It's locked,” Bimini said. “They always lock me in when I am with you.”

“Is there a guard outside?”

“No. You go through that door into the air conditioner room. There's a big generator, too. It supplies all the power to the island. From there, you walk up the stairs. There's a button to push. You can push a book cabinet away then, and step into the Senator's den.”

I went to the desk with the radio equipment shelved on it. I found the VHF and switched to channel 22, the Coast Guard's emergency frequency.

“It's not connected,” the woman said. “I tried it this morning when I was beginning to think that you would never wake up again. They must have disconnected it when they put you in here.”

I went back to the bed and sat down. My head still hurt, and I was beginning to grow dizzy. She noticed.

“Are you going to be all right? No, no, you're still too ill. I shouldn't have expected . . . ”

She was on the verge of tears again. I took her soft hand in mine. “Bimini. You must take the knife. They'll find it.” I forced a smile. “I'll pick it up when I come back for you. I promise.”

So what do you do when you wait for the footsteps of death to approach? I lay back on the bed, resting. I tried to put myself in their place. Why would they shoot an already comatose man? They wouldn't—unless it was Ellsworth. If it was Ellsworth, he would cut me into little pieces and feed me to the fish. But if it was anyone else, they would probably just weight me down and drop me over.

But where?

If I was to escape from my bonds and surface, and if I was to make it to land, I would have to know.

If. If.
If!

Perhaps I should take the knife. I might be strong enough to surprise one man, but there would certainly be more than one. It would take two big men to lift me, or three average-sized men.

No, I would have to work the odds. I would have to play the deadly little game. It was my only chance. Besides, they would probably find the knife when they came for me. And then . . . then we would both die.

To ease our nervousness, Bimini began to talk. She talked of her childhood, the little island where she had grown up.

“I was born on a little point of land in the chain of Bahamas called French Wells. My family lived in a little shack there, near the fresh water, across the creek from Crooked Island Veldt, about two hundred and fifty miles south-southeast of Andros.”

“I know the place.”

“You do!”

“I was at Albert Town once when I was in the Navy. On a liberty, a close friend of mine—he's dead now—a close friend and I went up to Crooked Island for the day. I remember the little white houses in the sun there at Church Grove Landing. What were the people there? Seventh-day Adventists?”

“Yes! The
Grove
! Wasn't it pretty? That's where I grew up.”

Oh, it was pretty, all right. Lilliputian houses by the clear tropical sea. Little black children playing in the dirt with the ragged, omnipresent island chickens. White beaches and palm trees, and wonderful fishing. I studied Bimini's lovely face. What was she? Twenty-three, twenty-four? I had been there about ten years before—that would have made her one of the pretty-eyed, shy-faced island girls. Just beginning to blossom; just beginning to feel her womanhood.

“Perhaps we saw each other? Do you think?”

“Perhaps.”

“My father worked in the cascarilla-bark groves there. They make medicine and a distaff liqueur from it. I remember that he always smelled so nice. The smell of those islands—wasn't it good? When Columbus came, he named them the fragrant islands. Did you know that, captain?”

I shook my head. “No. I didn't. But I remember the smell. It was a good smell. You still smell of the islands.”

She smiled at me. “Do I? I am so glad to hear that. Living here, doing what I do, I feel so . . . so dirty. As if I couldn't possibly smell nice.”

I reached out and touched her young face. Bimini: such a pretty name, such a pretty woman. She understood the look in my eye.

She grew serious: “Captain. We still have time. It would not be like with
him
. This would be a small loving thing, and we could make it last until . . . I will make you feel so good, captain. And I know, from the look of you, that you will make me feel better than I have ever felt.”

She started to slip the flimsy dress up over her head. I saw the momentary triangle of dark thighs before I took her arms.