The Howling II (11 page)

Two of the employees walked by on the path bordering the stretch of beach where Chris lay. Roberto, a handsome lad of seventeen, carried a tray of iced tea for a couple from Indianapolis who sat up the beach protecting their sunburns under one of the hotel’s umbrellas. Dancing along at Roberto’s side was Blanca, saucy and pert in her maid’s uniform, her arms loaded with fresh towels for the cabanas. The eyes of the boy and girl spoke intimately to each other.

Ah, young love, thought Chris Halloran as he watched them pass. Had he ever been in love like that? And once you lost it, could you ever get it back?

At the edge of the water, Audrey Vance stood barely covered by a pink bikini. Her slim, tanned legs were planted apart in the sand. She beckoned for Chris to come and join her.

Chris smiled at her and waved no thanks. Audrey was an actress who photographed like a dream, but couldn’t act her way into a high-school play. Thus, her appearances on various television series were mainly decorative. Chris had enjoyed her enthusiasm during their stay in Mazatlan, but he was beginning to think it was time he went back to work.

Audrey struck a pouting pose and shook her head at him in exasperation. Chris tipped the straw hat down over his eyes and lay back on the beach towel.

A moment later, cool droplets of saltwater splashed on his chest and stomach as Audrey stood over him shaking out her hair.

“Come on,” she said, “swim with me.”

“I’m resting.”

“Shit, you can rest any time. I want somebody to swim with me.” She reached down and lifted the hat from his eyes. “Maybe I’ll go and ask that beautiful young stud who works around here. That Roberto. I’ll bet he’d come swimming with me.”

“He might at that,” Chris said, “but you might have a problem with his girlfriend.”

“Come on, Chris, don’t be an old fart.” She kicked sand across his bare stomach, then ran lightly toward the water, laughing back over her shoulder at him.

With a sigh Chris pushed himself to his feet and jogged over the sand after the girl. While he was in Los Angeles Chris kept in shape with twice-weekly workouts at the gym, along with tennis and handball. Swimming, however, had never appealed to him. Even when he lived at the marina, he rarely used the swimming pool, and went to the beach only to play volleyball.

He followed Audrey as she splashed happily into the surf. The water was bathtub warm, and the waves were low and gentle. The girl swam easily ahead of him with long graceful strokes while he tried to keep up with his own windmilling version of the crawl.

Fifty yards offshore, Audrey stopped and waited for him, treading water. When he splashed up beside her she wrapped her arms and legs around him and gave him a big open-mouthed kiss. They sank together slowly below the surface:

Chris came up sputtering and blowing as the girl bobbed up like a dolphin beside him.

“What are you trying to do, drown me?” he said between coughs.

Audrey tossed the wet hair out of her eyes and laughed at him. Chris tried and failed to hold a stern expression.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” he said.

She swam over close to him and slipped one hand under the waist band of his trunks. “Have you ever screwed under water?”

“Sure, lots of times.”

Abruptly the girl’s mood changed. She backed off and looked at him. “You’ve done just every damn thing, haven’t you?” Without waiting for a response, she struck out toward the beach.

No, he thought as he swam slowly after her, not quite everything. Sometimes, though, it seemed he was trying. Until three years ago he had lived a fairly quiet bachelor life. He raised a little hell on weekends, did his share of womanizing, but on the whole led a life devoid of extreme highs and lows. Then came the urgent call for help from Karyn Beatty. Answering that call had plunged Chris into a night of hell in the mountain village of Drago, and had changed his life forever.

After the horror of Drago and the fire that destroyed it, there had been the nerve-shattering six months he and Karyn had spent trying to run away from it. When he finally returned to reality he had quit his job and gone into partnership with solid Walt Eckersall, who allowed him to take off two or three months a year. He had moved out of the swinging-singles apartment and rented a house in Benedict Canyon, where he could party when he felt like it and be left alone when he wanted to. When he worked he worked hard, and when he played he went to places like the Kona Coast or Curacao or Mazatlan. Sometimes he went with a woman, sometimes by himself.

Chris knew that his life-style was designed to help him forget the past. Most of the time it worked, but for some reason he had lately found himself often thinking of Karyn. He had never shaken the nagging guilt he felt for not going to see her at her parents’ home after the Las Vegas crack-up.

What the hell, he told himself for the hundredth time. She got better, didn’t she? After the way things ended, seeing him would have done nothing to help her condition. It could easily have made things worse. Chris put his head down in the water and stroked powerfully toward the shore.

Audrey was waiting for him when he waded up onto the beach. Her momentary irritation was all over.

“About Goddamn time, slowpoke. I thought I was going to have to swim out and haul you in.”

‘“Why do you think I was stalling?” he said.

“I thought maybe you were daydreaming about some old girlfriend.”

Chris looked at her quickly, but saw she was just kidding. One of those unconscious intuitive flashes women seemed to get. If they ever harnessed that power, he thought, they could rule the world.

He said, “Do you want to go get some lunch?”

Audrey lowered her eyes demurely and peeked up at him through thick, moist lashes. “Do I have another choice?”

“My God, woman, you’re insatiable.”

“Damn right, big fella, and you love it. Come on, I’ll help you shower off the salt.”

They walked hand in hand up from the beach and along the wide veranda of the old Spanish-style building that was the original hotel. In the early 1960s, six separate cabanas had been built on either side of the main building, following the curve of the beach. Chris and Audrey turned in at Number 7, the nearest to the main building, on the south side.

*****

An hour and a half later Chris lay face down, naked, on the bed. His face was pressed against the pillow, his body completely relaxed. Audrey moved restlessly around the room, her tanned body glowing in the light from the afternoon sun that filtered between the slats of the bamboo shades.

“Why do men always want to go to sleep afterwards?” she said.

“Mmmpff,” Chris muttered into the pillow.

“It always pumps me full of energy. Makes me want to get moving and do things.”

Chris rolled over onto his side and looked at her. “We already did things.”

She dropped into one of the two rattan chairs and stroked herself between the legs. “Good things.” She gave him a mischievous look. “I’ll bet I could get you interested again.”

He sat up and swung his feet off the bed. “No question about it, but first let’s go get some lunch.”

“Okay, spoilsport.”

“Got to keep up my strength, honey. A man my age needs a balanced diet.”

“A man your age,” she mocked. “Jesus, thirty-three is really getting up there, isn’t it?”

“Hand me my pants,” he said.

Audrey took a pair of white jeans from the back of the chair where she was sitting and carried them to the bed. As she handed them to Chris, something fell out of the pocket and hit the grass carpet with a tiny thump. Audrey dropped to her knees and looked around on the floor for a moment. Then she reached under the bed and came out with a small silver object. She held it out to Chris in the palm of her hand.

“What’s this?” she said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Chris’s expression sobered. “It’s nothing.” He held out his hand. “Here, I’ll take it.”

“It looks like a bullet.”

The tiny lump of metal winked up at Chris. It was a bullet, all right. A twenty-two caliber long rifle bullet of pure silver. There had been twelve of them, made to Chris’s order by a bemused Los Angeles gunsmith. On the night of the werewolves in Drago, he had fired eleven of them. Karyn had fired the last. Chris had returned just once to the burned-out village, and the bullet had gleamed up at him like an eye from the blackened earth. He had pocketed the bullet and never gone near the place again.

“It’s just a toy,” he said to Audrey. “Let’s have it.”

“Another secret,” Audrey said, sulking. “You never tell me anything really important about yourself.”

“What do you mean, honey? I’m an open book.”

“No, I’m serious. I know that little bullet has some important meaning for you. Why won’t you share it with me?”

“Because it’s none of your business.”

Audrey closed her fist around the bullet and marched across the room to the closet, where she began rattling coat hangers irritably. “I’ll bet it was a present from that woman.”

“What woman?”

“The woman. The one you had the hot rocks for and was married to your best friend.”

Chris studied the bare back of the girl as she sorted through the clothes hanging in the closet. Either she was a lot more perceptive than he gave her credit for, or he was talking in his sleep.

“Get dressed,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

*****

As they sat in the hotel dining room awaiting their lunch, the conversation was strained and artificial. It was as though a third person sat unseen at their table, listening.

THE AIRPORT AT Mazatlan was small by United States standards. Karyn Richter unbuckled her seat belt as the Aeronaves 727 rolled to a stop. From the window by her seat she watched with amazement the number and variety of aircraft landing, taking off, taxiing, waiting, and just sitting there. There were sleek new jets, old DC-3s, corporate Lears, private Cessnas and Pipers, and even a battered old open-cockpit biplane. Karyn could see no pattern to their movements, but she assured herself that somewhere a control tower was directing the traffic. Nevertheless, compared to big, orderly LAX, it was like a downtown intersection on Christmas Eve.

When the door was opened she joined the other passengers and filed out and down the stairway that had been rolled up to the plane. She crossed the expanse of black tarmac to the terminal building.

Inside it was hot and crowded. Over the noise of arriving and departing passengers announcements rattled continually over the PA system loudspeakers, first in Spanish, then English. Karyn located the baggage-claim counter and after an hour was finally reunited with her bag. She carried it out of the terminal building and set it down on the sidewalk. The air outside was fresh and cool with a hint of the sea, and she inhaled gratefully.

“Carry your suitcase, lady?”

The voice close behind her startled Karyn. She turned to see a tall, pockmarked youth grinning at her through bad teeth. The end of a wooden match protruded from one corner of his mouth.

“No, thank you,” she said, and turned away.

“Ah, come on, lady, you don’ wan’ to carry that heavy thin’ all by yourself.”

Karyn looked pointedly up the street, trying to ignore him.

“I’m real strong. I can carry anythin’ you got. Wan’ to see my muscle?”

“I don’t need anything carried.” She tried to keep the apprehension from showing in her voice.

The youth picked up her bag and backed off, hefting it. “See? It’s not too heavy for me.”

“Please,” Karyn said, trying to sound authoritative, “put that down. It belongs to me.”

“Ah, lady, you don’ wan’ to talk like that.”

“Ay, chico!” A deep male voice snapped off the words like a whip. The startled boy looked over Karyn’s shoulder, and she turned too to see who had spoken.

A square-bodied man with an enormous Zapata moustache glared at the boy. He spoke in hard-edged street Spanish, punctuating his words by jabbing a finger down at the sidewalk.

The boy’s insolent grin fell away. He set the bag down at Karyn’s feet and started to back off.

The stranger spoke again in Spanish. His voice was soft, but the words were unmistakably a command.

The boy’s eyes shifted over to Karyn. “I’m sorry, lady,” he muttered, then slipped away into the crowd coming out of the building.

“Permit me to offer apology for my city, senora,” said the man with the moustache. “That boy was a ruffian, a bad one. We are not all like him. There are many good people in Mazatlan.”

“I’m sure there are,” Karyn said. “Thank you.”

The man gestured toward a mud-spattered, ten-year-old Plymouth parked at the curb. The white painted letters TAXI were barely visible on the door under a coating of dirt. “The taxi of Luis Zarate is at your service, senora. Also guide service, if you desire.”

“Well - I could use a taxi,” Karyn said. “Can you take me to the Palacio del Mar Hotel?”

“Con mucho gusto, senora,” said Luis Zarate. With a flourish he swept open the rear door of the Plymouth and gestured Karyn inside. He carried her bag to the rear and put it in the trunk, which he closed by tying the lid to the bumper with a frayed length of electric cord.

“The Palacio is a beautiful hotel,” he said when he was in position behind the wheel. “It is old and comfortable, and not so big that they forget about you.”

“That’s nice,” Karyn said, without really listening.

Luis started the car and they pulled away from the curb with a grinding of gears and the roar of an unmuffled engine. As he drove, Luis proudly pointed out the sights of the city - the twin golden spires of the cathedral, the old Farol lighthouse looming offshore, the busy fishing docks - until he sensed that Karyn was not paying attention.

“The senora is troubled?” he said.

Karyn looked up sharply. “What’s that?”

Luis Zarate’s dark, liquid eyes regarded her seriously from the rear-view mirror. “Forgive me, senora, I do not mean to speak out of my place. But I am a gypsy, comprende, and through my blood I have a gift for knowing when someone is in trouble.”

“Really?” Karyn said. “You’re a gypsy?”