Throughout most of the Caribbean, life is very distinctly divided into separate and unrelated halves. On the one hand, the tourists come and go gibbering, giggling, hoping and despairing. And the money they shed like dandruff supports an entire tinsel world of hotels, clubs, gambling complexes and diversionary outlets. On the other hand, beneath all the gaiety, music and untaxable income statements stashed in foreign banks, the Caribbean suffers. And its people those who have not become headwaiters, blackjack dealers, maids and pimps shamble through their compressed life-cycle, taking time only to beg, recover from diseases, and starve.
The island of San Dozes was no exception to this rule. What was once an undeveloped but perfectly happy little kingdom, had been converted to an "island paradise." The age of development had come to San Dozes in the form of Time-of-Your-Life Vacations, Incorporated.
Time-of-Your-Life, or 'los tiempos," as its personnel were referred to, owned the people, the beaches, the buildings, and, of course, the air and water rights on San Dozes. Time-of-Your-Life, in turn, ranked twentieth, at the bottom of a list of holding companies at the top of which sat the several men who controlled a large part of the Caribbean world.
No one who cared had any trouble identifying who these several men were. But it was something else again to speculate on how the nickels and dimes spent by the tourists on postcards or by the native for fishing-hooks wound up in the bank accounts of these men. For in this world of halves, the relationship between the foreign haves and indigenous have-nots was rigidly maintained. The complexity of control which the labyrinthine ladder of holding companies represented, proved that nothing was left to chance least of all, exposure. There were those who had estimated that a hundred men, working with all the benefits of computerized investigation and accounting, would have to spend a decade to prove that San Dozes, for example, was part of someone's game of Monopoly. Better just to accept the contrast between appearance and reality, and perhaps daydream about ridding the Caribbean of its kingpins. It was far more easy, and depending on how the kingpins used you, far more profitable or fun.
To Mr. Boulo, for instance, accepting the contrast meant sheer profit. Boulo had always been a hotel manager. In the past that had meant one thing managing a hotel. And Boulo had always been a good man on the job. Now, having come to the Caribbean, Boulo had learned to be two things a hotel manager, and an operative for the system.
The first half of Boulo's day was spent on the former role on appearances. It meant gliding into his office early in the morning and checking guest lists, expenditures, contingencies and emergencies. Then there was the tour of the dining room, wishing everyone good morning, and perhaps presenting a selected guest with an island flower, for the hair or buttonhole. Then into the kitchen, tasting the food, checking the menus, joking in a slightly aloof manner with the chefs and their staff. And from there, a winding course through the hotel complex, its suites, lounges, bars, pools, and recreational facilities. And, finally, a long stroll on the beach wearing a slightly harassed and tired look behind sunglasses and muted silk ascot nodding to the guests, patting the heads of small wretched dogs, and possibly with a great show of world-weariness, plucking a beer can or Kleenex from the shining white sand.
So much for appearances. In anybody's book, Mr. Boulo was the hotel manager par excellence. But it was dull work petty work, and more than that, as Boulo frequently smiled to himself, completely unnecessary. For the Sandozes, in fact, ran itself. The guests arrived and departed in scheduled groups, filling every room. His assistants saw to it that the hotel functioned without missing a beat. There was no one to hire, no one to fire, no changes, additions, or crises to contemplate. The Sandozes, like every other unit in the vast, sea-straddling island empire, ran according to the master-plan.
The master-plan provided that island X would cater to high-spending bachelor junior executives who wanted to gamble; that island Y would satisfy the brochure-conditions of being a haven for middle-aged dowagers and widowers looking for surreptitious and discreetly-handled stud service; that island Z would be a paradise for young married couples from sophisticated backgrounds who wanted a vacation-full of hiking, scooter-riding and really "getting to know the fascinating peoples of the island."
The master-plan for the islands made this particular area of the Caribbean not unlike a hospital, in which hundreds of different, specific services are provided; like a smooth-running hospital, each service was tailored to an isolated unit and no cross-over, no interference, no confusion of function was tolerated.
No gigolo-seeking dowagers, happy-go-lucky playboys, or buoyant young marrieds were permitted on San Dozes, for example. The master plan's tour and vacation agencies supplied a different clientele to Boulo's little empire package tours of young schoolteachers from the Midwest, unmarried clerks from big city department stores, lonely bachelors of modest means only the cream of the unsophisticated, unassuming, un-affluent and unmarried American crop were referred to Boulo's "vacation dreamland," where "Life forgets time and the world you left behind."
San Dozes gave the appearance of being a bustling community populated by an indifferent group of natives and several thousand rather shy American pleasure-seekers. The guidebooks and tour material described it as "completely and pleasantly" different from the other islands in that there was a minimum of honky-tonk, no movie-stars or jet-setters, and, most surprising of all, no gambling. All these elements were incorporated in other units. But all the units, including San Dozes, paid, and paid handsomely.
Gambling pays, but it requires a certain breed of vacationer. And San Dozes paid, according to the profit-making system that determined its own unique clientele. This was the reality behind the appearance. It was the reality that occupied the other half of Boulo's day.
It would be after lunch and Boulo the competent and tactful hotel manager who had been so bored all morning strides briskly into his office. He slides behind his desk like a jet rolling into its hangar and confronts the material laid before him in three piles.
First, the research pile a folder for each guest. The agency back home in the guest's area which to all appearances is a travel service has filled each folder with the information Boulo needs. Through a masterful system of perfunctory investigation and research techniques, it has filled out a form which tells Boulo the guest's history, how much he or she makes, who his or her closest friends and family are, and what the future conceivably holds in short, a complete and concise blueprint which could resemble anything from a credit application to a blueprint for blackmail.
Then the pile of hotel records in which the activities, attitudes and general behavior of each guest are recorded by the diligent and omnipresent staff. At the bottom of each guest's form are remarks which the guest has made in the presence of a maid, bartender or bellhop remarks which tell Boulo exactly why the guest came to San Dozes and what he or she really wanted from the vacation.
The third pile contains each guest's tour-contract. No one who comes to San Dozes pays in advance for the vacation package. The travel agency back home computes the cost of travel and estimated expenditure for the length of time the guest wishes to stay at San Dozes. Down to food, drink, souvenirs and tips, the total package estimate is fairly accurate and reflects almost exactly the schedule of time payments that the guest will pay off upon his or her return to the States. But in large print, at the bottom of the contract, is a blank space for "Other expenses incurred at the guest's pleasure." It is this unknown which will determine the exact amount of indebtedness the vacation-goer will face when he or she returns to teaching school, or selling shoes, or running a computer.
The three piles represent, for the most part, guests who will be leaving the next day. Boulo flicks through the piles, matching the folders and forms in sets of threes, and jotting down a single notation for each guest on a schedule-sheet dated for that evening. When he is almost through scanning the material, the door to his office opens and some twenty people file in. They represent part of the hotel's Special Activities Staff. Each of them has labored to make a particular guest comfortable. Each of them is responsible for the guest's last evening on the island an evening which in nearly every case comes as a real surprise to everyone, except Boulo and his staff.
Boulo briefs the staff on their particular guests, and together they fill in the time-slots on the evening schedule. One by one the staff file out of Boulo's office to deliver to each guest the invitation which is responsible for San Dozes' secret but unique reputation. The last one left is a strikingly handsome dark-skinned girl, dressed in a variation of the hotel's non-uniform a simple smock, cut very low in the back and slit high up the legs. She casually crosses the office, as Boulo studies the last file, and locks his door. Then, throwing her hair back, she glides to the side of his desk.
"Don't tell me we have a tough nut on our hands," she smiles, getting no response from Boulo, who is staring fixedly at the dossier in front of him, "C'mon, Boo don't work so hard, you'll get a headache, or go blind, and baby! where will I be then?" she says, coming around in back of his chair. She slides her bare arms forward along the sides of his neck and presses her body down against his back.
But Boulo doesn't acknowledge her. His eyes are vacantly studying the name on the folder a young schoolteacher named Robin Wead, one of those on the group-tour that will be leaving tomorrow. This girl Robin is anything but a tough nut, Boulo thinks. She's the kind of person San Dozes was created for. A pushover. Boulo knows he's seen her himself. Saw her the first day she came, down on the beach. She obviously had never worn a bikini before. And Boulo had stopped his morning walk to observe her self-consciousness. He remembered how she kept studying herself, fidgeting with the brief two-piece costume, trying to pull it down to cover more of her bottom and up to conceal more of her young, lush breasts. He remembered how stiffly she had walked, trying to keep her breasts from jiggling probably scared stiff, he had thought, that they would pop right out of their little cloth hammocks; and how, like a little girl, she had pulled the triangular patch away when it rode up between her legs and threatened her there. Probably not a virgin though, he had thought after all, the agency attempted to steer clear of virgins.
But all the same there had been something about her, something that had made Boulo linger each morning to watch this one of his thousands of guests who represented flat sums of dollars and cents. Maybe it was the way she had smiled at him the next day when he had come walking by quite close to her. By then, he had noticed, she had gained enough nerve to untie the straps of her halter while lying down to suntan. But the sound of his footsteps swooshing in the sand had startled her. And, arching up to look at him, she had nearly forgotten her vulnerable condition. So that her breasts had almost swung forward into Boulo's direct view before she recovered the halter with a desperate hand and pressed it to her. And when Boulo looked back at her, having averted his eyes, the way she smiled at him not giggling, not blushing, and certainly not inviting just smiling, had really grabbed him. For a split second the man of appearances had almost thought of a distant, ideal reality. But he recovered himself, and had smiled his manager's smile back and kept walking. And nearly forgotten the whole incident by the next day when this girl Robin had passed him and turned to thank him innocently for running such a nice hotel.
"Mustn't get attached to the guests, darling ... simply won't do," murmured the girl who hung on Boulo's back. Boulo began coming out of his trance as a pair of lips nibbled at his ear and two slender hands worked their way down the buttons of his shirt. "Is Boo-boo got a crush on the little yanqui school-marm?" teased the voice.
"Don't get smart!" he half-snarled, slamming the folders down. He thrust himself back in the chair, tilting it so that his head caught the girl right in the stomach.
"That's my baby," she laughed, seizing the opportunity to spread his shirt open and run her hands over his well-stuffed stomach. She squirmed her hips against his head as he reached back to squeeze her thighs and buttocks through the thin flaps of the smock.
"You just keep your mind on mama and forget that little puta," she leered down at him, pushing her hands down to undress him further. "Mama's going to give that little yanqui a night to remember."
She backed away from Boulo's chair, pulling him farther and farther over, until suddenly the casters on the executive chair shot forward and spilled Boulo out of the chair, collapsing them both to the floor. She took advantage of the fall to pull his shirt back and off and then, with a wild yelp of glee, rolled free from him as he struggled to get to his feet.
He scrambled up and jumped for her as she dodged around the office. "Come on, Boo. Come and get your bad girl. Big, bad Alya." Circling to the desk, she kept it between them as they squared off around it. The fervid excitement of the game glowed in her eyes, matching the heavy-lidded look of punishing desire that was transforming Boulo's face. The office was filled with the sounds of their tense breathing as they circled the desk with increasing deliberation.
As if she were physically taking her cue from Boulo's expression, Alya's manner started to change. The wild playfulness ebbed away, and was replaced by a hurt and guilty look. It was what she wanted, what made the afternoons so complete for her.
"Alya's bad, a bad, mean thing," she said, in a kind of blank voice. "Tell me I'm bad, yes, say it, please say it, Boo!" she pleaded, at the same time crossing her arms over her head and in one swift motion pulling the smock clear of her body.
Boulo made no reply, but, circling to the back of the desk, opened a drawer and took out a thick leather strap. He crossed the room to the nearly naked girl, who lifted her face to receive a stinging slap from his open hand.
Boulo cursed her and, violently grabbing hold of her flimsy nylon panties, tore them from her hips. She smiled as he continued to swear at her, reviling her in the basest manner. She let him seize her by the hair and lead her to the couch, where she flopped limply over its padded arm.
Burying her face in the thick cushions, she spread-her legs apart and hunched her body, clad only in a bra, down against the couch.
Then Boulo's arm rose and the strap whistled through the air, the smack of its impact joining with the sound of her muffled, pleased cry.
"Bad, bad, oh hurt me, Boo, harder, darling, oh I want to hurt so badly," she blubbered as the strap rose and fell, leaving deep welts across the coppery globes of her proffered buttocks as Boulo's frenzy and his curses increased, until, like a madman, he was both beating her and kicking out wildly at her wounded form, rousing in both of them the fever of their mutually twisted passions.
Outside the office, his secretary noted the time and turned away all persons with the polite news that Mr. Boulo would not be receiving callers for the next half-hour.
It wasn't much later that Alya, her appetite sated for the afternoon, resumed her role as hotel staffer and sought out her ward the young schoolteacher. Robin trusted Alya implicitly, this lovely, cultivated woman who had made her stay at Sandozes such a pleasure. And she listened carefully as Alya outlined the fact that, while the island really did have a spectacle worth seeing before one left, the hotel could assume no responsibility for its guests' behavior.
"Oh yes," Robin had said, in response to Alya's query, "I've had such a good time here only I had wished, you know, at some time, to get out around the island and see a bit of its life."
To which Alya had replied, according to the formula, "Well, Miss Robin, there is the festival of propagation celebrated here by our people. But the hotel's of the opinion that it's rather strong stuff for our guests and we can never tell how people will react."
"Oh, you don't have to worry about me," Robin assured her. "I'd love to see the whatever-it-is."
"Well, in that case, if you just sign this disclaimer that the hotel is in no way responsible and didn't solicit your interest that's a matter of legal form you know; we've learned our lesson from some of our guests in the past I'll be able to arrange something for tonight."
"Thanks so much," said Robin, briskly signing the papers attached to what was a copy of her tour-contract. "Will it cost anything?" she asked.
"Don't worry about that," answered Alya. "Any expenses will just be entered here, under "Other," with your agreement. See you at eleven-thirty tonight, O.K.? "
"Absolutely," nodded Robin, "wouldn't miss it for the world at least now I'll have something to take home besides a suntan!"
If you only knew, honey, thought Alya, as she smiled and left the room.
If Robin had had any inkling of the organization behind her "night out" on the island, she might not have been curious as she was about the peculiar time Alya had arranged to pick her up.
But she was ready and bursting with interest that night when Alya came for her and they started over an unfamiliar island road in an old, rattling taxi. Robin really hadn't known what to wear to the celebration, but she had wanted to appear casual. So that afternoon she had bought herself a simple sort of dress which was half-way between the sexy smock Alya wore and the loose muumuus all the island women clad themselves in.
In the taxi, she already regretted that, after much deliberation, she had worn any underclothing at all. The thought that it was unnecessary had so surprised her that, once she had slipped into her bra and panties, she didn't let herself realize how incongruous they felt under the loose-fitting and comfortable smock. The night was exceptionally warm, and both women were bathed in the blast of humid air that poured in through the open windows of the taxi. And as grateful as Robin was for the luxury of the cool garment, she was partly annoyed with herself for wearing the constricting nylon and lace. It would be an easy matter to just hike the muumuu up, she thought, and slip the undergarments off but after shooting a sideways glance at her chaperone and then noticing the eyes of the driver in the little cracked mirror, she let the idea drop.
The taxi stopped, it seemed to Robin, in the middle of nowhere. But Alya, having paid the driver, grabbed Robin's hand and immediately led her off the road into the lush undergrowth. They seemed to be pacing along a well-defined trail, although Robin couldn't see a thing in any direction. Her ears were filled with the night sounds of the tropical world, and, with mounting anticipation, she stumbled along after Alya's energetic pace.
After several minutes, like a B-movie scene, thought Robin to herself, she detected the sounds of human voices and an exceptionally musical sort of drumming. And then, in a split second, her guide had pulled her from the darkness of the surrounding jungle into a torch lit clearing.
Robin instinctively tried to shrink back into the shadows, somehow sensing that she was a trespasser here the only white person. Her eyes darted around the shadows, noting the dark bodies seated in a circle around a mat-covered sort of arena, which in turn, was bounded by torches on poles.
Alya pulled her forward, and, as if on a signal, all the natives interrupted their noises to turn their gaudily painted faces to the newcomer. Robin's trepidation turned to real nervousness when a general clamor went up from the group as they acknowledged her presence. At the same time, a terrific volley went up from what Robin now recognized as a steel band several natives beating out an intricate music on brightly colored petroleum drums.
"It's okay they accept your being here," said Alya, leading the shrinking Robin to the other side of the clearing. Here there was a small bamboo lean-to, something like an oversized sedan-chair, and it was into this three-sided structure that Alya led Robin. From inside this shelter, they had a direct line of sight to the matted circle. Robin was surprised when, on looking about her, she could find nothing to sit down on. Standing nervously, feeling hot and sticky all over from the run along the trail, she turned after a minute to speak to Alya. But where Alya had been standing with her, there was no one now. And before Robin could begin to wonder about her companion's disappearance, the music started up again.
At the same time, a young boy wearing practically nothing, Robin noted in stupefied amazement ran up to the shelter and thrust a mug full of some liquid at her. The minute she took it, he bounded off. Whatever it was, it smelled good almost heady and without thinking, Robin began sipping it as her eyes followed the spectacle unfolding before her.
As the music increased in volume and rapidity, becoming an almost ferocious din, the bodies seated around the circle began chanting something which at times sounded like barking and then droning. The sound took hold of Robin's head and vibrated through her erect, flushed body, causing a novel kind of shuddering. But simultaneously, whatever it was she was drinking made her feel as though she were melting inside the soft center of her being growing hot with a strange fire encased in her trembling form.
Robin started swaying to the music in a stupor, automatically sipping more and more of the odd-tasting potion. She didn't blink when a figure sprang from the circle and started a graceful, leaping dance on the mats. like a news-ticker in the back of her head, her mind scanned the information that the dancer wore nothing. But Robin's mind was atrophying. She was seeing the muscular, whirling figure with her senses responding to his frenzied dance with her body.
And then a second figure sprang into the circle, and Robin's eyes widened a bit more as they registered the sight of a naked brown female body, glistening under the torchlight as it entered into a frantic but formal ballet with the Apollo-like male dancer.
Robin had never even dreamed in fantasy what was actually taking place before her. As the drums sang their unearthly song, and the dancers meshed and then shot apart, Robin began responding to the drama. She was swaying more intensely now, lolling from side to side in an attempt to rub her inner thighs together to quiet the burning hollowness she felt spreading within her. She hardly recognized the turmoil as desire, but instead felt empty, lonely hidden as she was from the euphoria and intensity of the spectacle. She dropped the mug to the ground absently. Her lips became wet with fascination. Her hands hitched up behind her, under the smock, and unsnapped the harsh halter that repressed the heavy pulsing in her breasts. With one arm under the smock, she sought her own flesh, steadying herself against the shelter as she drew one leg up in a desperate friction against the other.
Then, although Robin couldn't remember noticing it, Alya was in the group of dancers, which had grown to include several more naked bodies. The sight of her companion, springing about under the caresses of the dancers' hands and the torchlight, made Robin bite her lip in restless agony. Her knuckles whitened on the bamboo pole. Her body beat with a strange rhythm that was driving her out of her mind. And then she heard her name, heard the dancers, the others, the ringing drums calling her name, Robin!
And trembling as though she was going to split in two, a scream of want rising in her white-hot body, she finally lunged forward from the shelter. Running blindly ahead, she wrenched the smock from her body and plunged into the group of dancers. And then it was just relief, sheer relief as hands and limbs were pressed to her body as her mind went blank and the shutters of consciousness dropped over her eyes, and she sank into a thrumming, intoxicated void of pleasure.
Nineteen other guests had shared a similar experience that night, before it became Robin's turn. But, waiting in the airport's boarding lounge the next day, none of the twenty looked at each other.
For each was wondering in his or her own state of shock how they had been so successfully and completely trapped. Each had been called on by a member of Mr. Boulo's staff. Each had been shown pictures of what they had done the night before pictures that made some of them faint or become physically sick. And each had been shown the addresses of those to whom the pictures would be sent, back in their home towns, where they lived and worked and tried to love. Unless, of course, they were willing to acknowledge the extra $1000 added to their tour contracts under "Other Services" an amount of money each would be paying off for some time to come paying on the installment plan for their "Time-of-Your-Life" Caribbean vacation.
Some, like Robin, had reddened eyes from crying; others were helpless with anger. Each had realized that the world was composed of far greater powers than the institutions they thought they had a stake in back in their small home towns and cities. It was a gloomy, quiet plane trip back over the blue Caribbean.
CHAPTER TWO
Clint Westwood hung over the rail of the cruise ship that was taking him and his sister, Shirley, to the island paradise of San Dozes. It was the last place on earth Clint wanted to go. Not that he knew anything about it. He just damn well didn't want to go anywhere, least of all with, or for, Shirley.
And he didn't like the set-up, either. Bunch of crooks, he thought, flicking his cigarette at a seagull which had been floating close to the stern of the ship. He'd wanted to post the dough for the trip in advance with the travel agency back in New York. But no, they had said, that wasn't the way things worked.
"After all," he remembered the pink-cheeked little tour-counselor saying, "this is the age of credit, Mr. Westwood. We simply don't know how much you and your companion will be spending on the island. Our plan is designed for everybody's convenience."
Yeah, sure, he thought. Everybody's convenience meant that he'd have to watch Shirley every moment of the day so she didn't walk off with the hotel bar, or more--likely, the bartender.
What a pain in the ass! Here he was, in his early thirties no career behind him, none ahead of him. A hack journalist with three muck-raking articles to his credit. Okay, so they had been good articles; everybody had praised him and talked of Pulitzer Prizes and all that crap. But he had hardly had time to squeeze those three articles out over the past few years, in between cleaning up Shirley's messes, much less work up a coordinated series of pieces which could have gotten him a good job and some kind of future. It was Shirley, always Shirley!
Bailing her out, sobering her up, getting her committed, getting her out, meeting her bills, heading off her pick-ups a lifetime of wet-nursing. When the hell would it end!
Maybe she'd slip and fall overboard and take up with a school of porpoises. Clint had heard they were a horny bunch!
And almost immediately he kicked himself for the thought! Nice talk, he thought, about his own sister. It wasn't her fault. Yeah, okay it wasn't her fault. So whose responsibility did that make her? Clint had been getting tired, damn tired, of tending to her all these years, trying to keep her out of trouble. What a hassle!
He remembered how it had all started when he and Shirley had been orphaned by that plane crash and how he had refused to let anybody back in Oak Woods take them in, how he had decided he would be the parents for both himself and Shirley and raise his younger sister in their house, where they belonged.
"Teenage Boy Takes Charge," the Oak Woods Gazette had headlined, and everybody had marveled at Clint's self-reliance, maturity, and devotion to his sister.
Well, that's where it was at his devotion to Shirley. He had finally allowed himself to face that fact, although it had been haunting him for years, demanding confrontation. But he had started to let himself remember how much he really had loved Shirley when they were both young. How he did anything for her, and how he was teased by his friends for being his kid sister's lackey.
And how she had humiliated him, even back then, when their parents were still living. Every day Clint would rise early to go and brush his sister's beautiful blonde hair fifteen minutes on each side while she sat in bed, still drowsing. And then he would run a bath for her and after breakfast, see her to school.
And be her butler in the afternoon, and do her homework in the evening while she watched TV or played. And on the weekends, clean her room, and build her things, like a playhouse or a see-saw.
And back in those days, he had loved it loved being bullied around and being subject to her every whim; loved loving his sister to whom he was so close, when they both were so distant from their parents; and loved, especially, his reward, when Shirley would draw his head down and thank him and give him a quick kiss.
So he was devoted to her and he damn sure wasn't going to let any outsiders break up things just because they were alone now in the world. Clint had welcomed the opportunity to run the house. He was sure that it would mean that he and Shirley would become even closer, and that the rest of the world and all those bratty kids on the outside would leave them alone.
But Shirley hadn't played the game, Clint thought, strolling up the promenade deck and looking absently at the bloated bodies that were stretched out in corpse-like rows on the deck chairs.
Whereas before, she had held up her end by staying clear of the other boys and girls in Oak Woods, now everything changed.
First, there was the girl friend stage. Shirley was coming into her teens, and Clint grew more in love with her every day as her face and body became fuller with the ripeness of young womanhood. Now he did more than brush her long hair in the morning, fix her breakfast, and work for them both after school. After Mrs. Greeley had come over to fix dinner for them and Clint had discussed the household bills and such matters with her, he devoted his evenings to his sister.
And after all the homework had been done and the house straightened and Shirley had gotten into bed, Clint would be allowed to approach her and give her a massage. This was something Shirley had spotted in a women's magazine, and she was determined that, starting then, she would have massages all her life, in order to last as well as Charlie Chaplin had.
So Clint, at her bidding, had gotten books on massage and even chiropractic. He had become an expert masseur, muscle-pummeler, flesh-firmer, and organ-prober. Every night, with nervous hands, he would pull the covers back and drink in the sight of his sister lying on her stomach, her nightgown pulled up around her neck and a towel arranged discreetly over her childish buttocks. For an hour, and maybe two, Clint would straddle her luscious young body, kneading and molding her firm flesh, while Shirley gurgled with pleasure and thumbed through movie magazines. Then she would announce she'd had enough, and Clint, dripping with sweat, and his head spinning with increased confusion and ambivalent emotions, would climb off her, get his goodnight kiss, and slink off to bed.
In spite of these slavish acts of devotion, Shirley had betrayed him. She had started having girl friends with whom to share the secrets of early teen-hood; with whom to go to movies and the drugstore; with whom to tattle confidences about her big brother whom all the town's adults admired so much, and all their children held in such contempt.
Clint had suffered in silence, and redoubled his devotion, hoping to win his sister back from her lightheaded, giddy young friends. But Shirley had persevered. And sharply rebuked him after he had sulked in front of a friend she had invited home.
It was all so clear, Clint thought now, climbing the ladder to the boat deck. If only he could have seen the pattern. If only somebody had shaken him hard and snapped him out of his trance. Because at that stage of the game, he was really the sick one of the pair.
Clint's shoulders tightened with disgust as his mind remorselessly kept flipping back through the pages of those days. Damn, but she had made a fool of him! It was really something of a miracle he was relatively sane today, and not a raving psychopath, when he considered where the pattern might have led.
For Shirley had really poured it on. Out of all her friends, Patty was the one Clint could tolerate most. In fact, he responded to Patty pretty much the way any older teen-age boy would respond to a cute high school girl with an already lush figure. He had even thought about dating Patty, and hoped, in some vague way, that her company might present some solutions to the pressures of young manhood that Shirley intensified so.
But Srrrley had seen it all coming. And so she had started inviting Patty over to the house something which had made Clint feel awkward. Shirley staked out her claim to Patty absolutely. And before Clint could rebel or wake up, had reasserted her authority over him.
Clint had come home one evening just as Shirley and Patty were finishing dinner and Mrs. Greeley was leaving. He had busied himself in the kitchen fixing his own dinner while the two girls occupied themselves in the living room. Or at least he had thought that's where they were.
But then Shirley had called to him from her bedroom upstairs, and when Clint came into her room, he was virtually stunned. For Patty was lying on Shirley's bed the way Shirley did for him. And, except for her panties, stretched tightly over her small behind, there was nothing to conceal her enticing body from Clint's amazed eyes.
This was the first time Clint had seen another girl undressed since he really didn't count the sight of Shirley, which was an image set on one of his private mental pedestals. The sight of Patty's curving back and long, shapely legs had really upset him, and both girls knew it.
"C'mon, silly," Shirley had said, "I've been telling Patty all about the delicious massages you give me. I knew you wouldn't mind doing one for her. C'mon, Clint, don't be such a sissy oaf!" she had chided, grabbing him by the hand and leading him to the bed.
"I'm not going to bite you, Clint," Patty had giggled, turning her head to wink at him and in the process exposing the soft beginning swell of one of her ripe breasts.
"Be a good brother," Shirley had urged. "Don't act so stupid."
Clint had nearly bolted for the door, but instead hesitated, and knew he was lost. With the awkwardness of a dancing bear, he removed his shoes and clambered up onto Shirley's bed. He knelt beside Patty.
"Clint!" reprimanded Shirley. "Do it right, now! Just the way you do me. Don't be such a silly prude!"
So Clint had cautiously straddled Patty's rump, noting how she curled her fingers in glee and clucked deep in her throat when he let his weight partially down on her. He wiped his moist hands on his trousers, steadying himself so that the beating of his heart wouldn't bounce him off the bed.
Then he leaned forward and grasped her shoulders, bearing down and in with his strong fingers. Immediately, Patty gave a deep sigh and flexed her body beneath him. Clint froze, electrified by the contact with this entirely new and different physical female presence.
"C'mon, big brother, do your stuff," said Shirley, her eyes shining with vicarious amusement.
Clint swallowed hard and felt the premature perspiration of his nervousness drip down the insides of his arms. He leaned forward again and, shutting his eyes, trying to blank out the sight and sound of Patty, went to work.
There was something unique about doing this to a girl he had actually been attracted to. It was hard to go into the disciplined dream world he entered when performing this nightly ritual for Shirley. For Patty felt new to him, and his fingers were apprehensive itching to be bold, to explore the contours of her lovely body, yet not daring to even seem more than impersonal.
Clint was breathing hard now, shifting down on the bed to work on the young girl's hind quarters. He felt a guilty surge of excitement as his hands began on the curving slopes which began and ended her buttocks.
Patty sighed long, dolorous sighs, squirming her body slightly from side to side. The sweat dripped from Clint's forehead as he manipulated her legs, feeling her muscles and tendons reacting with unpredictable spasms as he probed the fibers and nerves that lay compacted beneath her ivory skin.
"Isn't it marvelous?" Shirley asked Patty, getting an emphatic moan of pleasure for an answer. "Don't you wish Clint would go on forever and ever?"
"Mmmmm, yes," said the outstretched girl, widening her legs so that Clint, who was now half-kneeling on the bed, could shape and firm them.
Clint was feeling slightly dizzy. He had never before experienced the sensations which were just now pulsing through his body and kaleidoscoping through his fevered mind. He wanted to rip off the towel that protected Patty's nudity. More than that, he wanted to grasp her and roll her over, to see what a real girl looked like in the flesh how she would compare to the photographs he saw in the New York Times Magazine ads, how she would stack up against the forbidden visions of Shirley he tried to keep shut out of his mind. He wanted to stop this deliberate business of massaging and hammering at Patty's soft flesh. And instead run his hands softly over her bare legs, feeling the silkiness of her skin and making her jump when he brushed her sensitive places.
Somehow, he finished the cycle and drew himself erect with an aching back and drenched body. Then both girls giggled, and Clint turned and raced from the room, retreating to his own lair of darkness and confusion. There, that night, Clint experimented and learned the game of the frustrated male.
What he learned so startled him that he actually played even more into his sister's hands certain that the fault he found and the guilt he experienced in this and subsequent episodes were deficiencies of his own. He didn't recognize what was happening to Shirley; that, as her body expanded outward and grew to biological maturity, her mind shrank further inward, retreating to a world of child-like emotions and hostilities. And the more he enfolded her in the protective armor of his slavish devotion, the more she used him.
After that evening with Patty, Shirley escalated her game. Before long, she was having more of her girl friends over, making Clint alternately nervous and resentful. And then one Saturday night Clint walked in quite late and found the living room full of girls he vaguely knew from high school. With a shock he realized that they were all wearing nightgowns and pajamas. He turned, bewildered, to Shirley for an explanation.
"Brother, baby we've all been waiting for you," she exclaimed gleefully. "This is my very first slumber party and I knew it wouldn't be complete without you. Hey, kids! Who's going to be first?"
Clint's heart sank. He needed no explanation as Patty pushed through the small throng of giggling, arguing girls. Shirley had grabbed the three big cushions from the sofa and made a mattress of them on the floor. His heart pounding like a pile-driver, Clint saw Patty turn her back to him, pull off her nightie, and flop down on the cushions. His eyes shot around the room, and he realized from the expressions on the faces of the other girls that Shirley had built all their hopes up equally.
By the time he had started to work on Patty's succulent flesh, someone had turned the lights out, and it was only by the firelight that he could discern what his hands were doing to the audience which gathered round to watch the massage.
He wanted to appeal to Shirley by the time he had finished with Patty, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, another seductive body had shed its clothing and scrambled onto the cushions, wriggling in expectation. And as Clint was urged to renew his work, he was confronted with the added spectacle of Patty, who had not bothered to dress herself. She sat with her knees drawn up and her hands clasped around her ankles, her eyes boring into Clint, making a jelly out of him, even as he started manipulating the new flesh under his hands.
For a while, Clint really believed he was going to go crazy. His hands stopped tingling and went almost numb as they kneaded the firm body of the new candidate; his ears stopped hearing the giggles of the teenage audience and began a strange ringing. His eyes could no longer focus on what he really wanted to see in the nude bodies near and under him. Desire the confusion of emotions left him, and he began to grow almost homicidally angry.
Then suddenly he felt himself being tickled by a coy hand in the semi-darkness. Turning with a snarl, he lashed out, trying to connect a tensely knuckled fist with one of the mocking figures around him. And immediately he was jumped by several of the girls. With whoops of almost insane delight, they wrestled him to the ground and pinned him as he fought like a madman to free himself. His shirt was ripped away and several artful hands began tickling him, making his body leap all over and forcing screams of hysterical laughter and fury from his throat.
Only when he thought he was going to black out from desperation, as the thinly clad nymphets swarmed around him, when he thought his lungs would collapse from the strain of his struggles, when he feared his heart would burst from shame and ignominy, did a voice from the darkness Shirley's voice demand an end to the game.
But the price of freedom Shirley demanded of her brother, who was trembling and nearly broken in spirit, was that he remain with her friends throughout the night. And so for hours Clint waited on the young lovelies and was forced to come into closer contact with them, playing spin-the-bottle and other fiendish recreations which they devised, one after another, to drive him to the breaking point.
After that night, Clint had changed his schedule rarely coming close to the house except at night, and only when he had assured himself that no traps had been set. Still devoted to Shirley, still waiting on her in the same macabre fashion, Clint was different in that the mechanism of lust had been tightly and definitely wound in him. But still he didn't see the pattern.
It was quite a bit later, in another school year, and Clint had started to fuel his fantasies directly from his contact with Shirley, who grew more beautiful and more provocative with every day, although, to her brother, she was still untouchable.
Clint came into the house and, after calling for Shirley, assumed he had the place to himself until he went upstairs and saw a light coming from her room. But this time, when he walked in and saw a nude body on the bed, he wasn't quite so paralyzed.
"What are you doing here? Where's Shirley?" he demanded of Patty, who lay without moving, naked and gleaming in the light that came from the fixture at the head of the bed.
"She told me to tell you she'd be back. Come here, Clint," murmured the girl. "Do me the way you used to, please?"
Clint hesitated, tempted to turn his back on the girl, who was so obviously flaunting herself before him, trusting him, as all of Shirley's friends had learned to trust her brother. But when he paused, a change came over him. He no longer saw a female body belonging to one of his sister's friends. He saw an aggregation of feminine curves, the lines and contours of light and shadow on a naked, seductive body. He stepped forward, feeling Patty's half-closed, guileless eyes watching him. Then, a smile flitting across his lips, he clambered up onto the bed. For once, Clint decided, he was going to see the other half. All this time, all this teasing, all his fantasy and frustration, he was going to settle all that right now.
He reached out a hand. But instead of grasping Patty's flesh with the rough impersonality of a body builder, he let his fingers slide down her long back. He could feel her skin jump, like that of a horse when tickled. This was more like it, he thought, beginning to caress her, bringing his hand down over her buttocks, pausing just long enough to squeeze them ever so slightly.
He could feel Patty tense, and he knew this wasn't what she'd been expecting from Shirley's brother. His blood started racing through his veins as he looked, really looked, at Patty the soft curves of her rump, the tapering ivory columns of her legs. There were tap-hammers going against his temples as he deliberated for a few seconds, and then abruptly he did it.
He grabbed Patty and flung her over on her back before she could even draw a breath of surprise. That was more like it, he thought, as he drank in the extraordinary new sight of her exposed breasts, with their small strawberry tips. Much more like it! Patty lay there, her face almost expressionless as his eyes traveled down her body, devouring every inch of her ripe figure, boring through her at the most intimate junctures.
To Clint's great surprise, as he reached out a hand half to feel one of those succulent mounds, half to restrain her if she should try to escape Patty caught his hand and guided it to her. Scrutinizing her as much as his excited state would allow, he noted how she closed her eyes as his hand draped itself over one of her breasts. Automatically, he applied his other hand to her bulging endowment.
And then he was caressing her, squeezing and smoothing the twin fruits, feeling the strange satisfaction of their soft extremities growing rough and hard under his palms, catching them between his fingers and instinctively goading them to a further state of stimulation. And she was pulling him down toward her, at the same time working his shirt free from his torso. Clint saw her face loll to one side, the soft, moist mouth ready and open, and took the unmistakable cue, driving his lips against hers, roiling his tongue against the snake-like flickerings of her own.
Lust, and a satisfaction which bordered on revenge, and her rising desire, of which he was becoming animally aware, spurred him on. As her hands started caressing him, his began their wild peregrinations over the burning expanses of her body. His knee drove rudely between her naked thighs, which parted under the rough pressure. His hands pinched her and tormented her, probing at tingling nerves and tightening muscles. His mouth dropped to a breast, and then his head swam from one conical peak to the other.
Whimpering with what Clint at first thought was pain but soon recognized as utter delight, Patty grabbed his head and guided it back and forth, letting his slathering mouth nip and seize her sensitive flesh. The hands buried in his hair pushed him down with mounting urgency. And her voice became more agonized and desperate.
Not that he had ever conceived of how love was made. Or ever imagined what practice Patty was forcibly introducing him to. But Clint was no longer a thinking being. The frequency of his lust responded to the signals the writhing girl was giving him. With willingness he backed down the bed, greedily feeding off the banquet her body offered him, until he reached the goal that her every action and demand was insisting upon. The sudden pitch of her cries and spasmodic reflex of her body thrusting against him told Clint that he had arrived where she had meant him to go. And he drove at her relentlessly, and her fingers knotted in his hair, and she cried out in a voice that resonated through every fiber of his own swollen being.
And then, as she quieted and Clint slowed the pace of his furious labors, he felt his skin prickle in a different way from its already super-sensitive anxiety; felt suddenly as though he were exposed, instead of the exhausted form he knelt over; felt as though he were being bathed in the audacious glare of a spotlight; and suddenly knew why.
Rearing up and spinning around, Clint saw his sister standing not three feet from the bed. Her eyes shone with an unnatural, reptilian luster, as if they were mirrors in which not just he but the entire cinematic pageant of his lust was being reflected. He saw, in his shock, Shirley's arm, where it disappeared under her bathrobe, and saw that she didn't notice that he saw.
It was then, as his passion sank like a torpedoed tanker and a sickness oozed up from his ruptured soul and spread over him, that Clint really saw Shirley for the first time. It was that night when he recognized the pattern, that night, as he saw and understood the look of twisted pleasure in his voluptuous sister's eyes, that Clint's sense of devotion vanished.
If things were not established as he, Clint, had taken so much care to establish them, he could have been a free man from that night on. That trap she had set with Patty might have represented her ace in the hole. But Shirley had a hold over Clint in the very nature of the system he had worked out for them both. He couldn't leave and she wasn't going to. The only thing that changed was that she no longer needed to confuse Clint; all the time of her ripening years could be devoted to making his life a nightmare.
She started soon after that. Clint remembered the weekend nights, awakening to noises downstairs, and coming down to find some slob from school mauling Shirley as she lay wantonly on the porch swing or living room couch. Then, just about the time when he had finally driven off all her schoolmate victims, she was getting old enough to go out and start messing around with real men.
Clint lit a cigarette, facing into the warm wind that blew out of the Caribbean. His jaw tightened and the smoke churned within him as he remembered the first time he had heard the word applied to Shirley: nymphomaniac! He had flattened the friend who had offered it, and then gone through an entirely different, new sort of hell accepting the term.
And accepting responsibility for Shirley. Which meant that soon they had moved to New York, where Clint had tried every form of help available. Psychiatrists had tried to treat her and wound up fighting her off the couch. Ministers had tried to reach her and hurried away with scarlet faces and rumpled habits. Authorities had tried to commit her, and then explained to him helplessly that she became the most normal, intelligent and rational female in the world behind institutional walls. Friends had tried to get her jobs or help Clint oversee her activities.
And the years had gone by. One after the other, punctuated only by the more grotesque scenes as when Clint would arrive home to find three salesmen living in his apartment and claiming the naked girl in the bedroom had invited them; when he arrived home to find a sea of alcohol or traces of heroin on the kitchen table. One thing after another, and Shirley had kept withdrawing, growing at once more beautiful and more sickly.
Lately there had been no real horror shows. She had just been very quiet and moody. And one friend, an intern at Bellevue, who had stuck by Clint and was the only other human being to whom Shirley might respond, had suggested getting her out of the city. And another friend had suggested a Caribbean cruise. So Clint had arranged everything, scraped together some money, and after thumbing through the phone-book, signed them both up on a Time-of-Your-Life tour. Secretly, he hoped Shirley would meet someone insane enough to marry her; openly, he prayed that what so many doctors had hinted at would happen that something would come along to shock her into reality and into a sense of life.
God, how he hoped so! The ship's whistle sounded, a great vibrating blast that shuddered through his bones and rattled his teeth. Clint flicked his cigarette over the rail and started below to find his sister and their luggage. He waved to the pretty girl who smiled at him.
CHAPTER THREE
The girl's name was Katrina Nadie, and she was what the columnists like to refer to as a raven-haired beauty. Katrina, in her late twenties, had the kind of looks that would last, without any kind of beauty aids, for the next twenty years. An aristocratic face, punctuated by deep, dark eyes and a full, sensuous mouth, held itself loftily on her shoulders in a frame of swirling black hair. The hair itself tumbled to her shoulders--the beginning of her magnificent body.
It was the kind of body men would be distracted by, pausing to carefully evaluate the terrain that rippled under the light sun-dress. The kind of body most men never saw with high, thrusting breasts which pushed out against the flimsy bodice, emphasizing the sharp rake the dress made as it angled in to hug her willowy waist and the planes of her hips. Katrina's body was so startlingly proportioned that it made her look shorter than she actually was her tight little rounded behind and perfect, tapering legs creating the visual impression that she was more elfin than amazon.
Katrina had used her body discreetly in her early past. For she hadn't needed to exploit its commanding powers as some women might have. At one time she had money, some position, an excellent background, and the single-minded independence that superior schooling and connections could give a young woman.
But she had been tempted, once, to avail herself of her considerable endowments, postponing the many careers that had been offered to her in favor of following up a lead to Hollywood from an old actor-friend. From that one decision had come two years of disenchantment and heartbreak, as Katrina discovered that whenever a person sought success on a level that was for the most part populated by the unprincipled and unscrupulous, one sank to that level. And so she had, winding it all up by falling foolishly in love with a European who claimed to have both money and production talents.
It was during her short marriage to this most typical of frauds that she learned just how real degradation could be. And it had taken all her pull and all the penitence she could muster before old family friends to break loose of the disastrous arrangement. Finally, she had finished it, with a plane trip to El Paso, a secret taxi ride to Juarez, and a numbing trip back with her divorce certificate clutched in her hand.
Take a trip, her friends urged her, those few she had not alienated by her antics. And it seemed like a good idea, a trip that would get her away from phony people and the brittle, scheming world she had let herself be dragged into. Thus, when it was her turn to enter the booth at the travel agency and the tour guide asked her what she did for a living, Katrina lied and said she was a schoolteacher. And was relieved when the bright young thing had described just the place for a vacationing schoolteacher.
She hadn't been fooling, either, Katrina had thought, as she looked over the cruise-boat's population en route to the Caribbean. Everybody on it looked either like rejects from a chamber of commerce golfing tournament or like the young soda-fountain attendants she had seen arrive in Hollywood by the busload coming straight out of Iowa on their last forty dollars looking for a glamorous career as model or starlet.
There was one exception. The handsome but sad-looking man that Katrina had made a point of smiling at whenever their paths crossed. He looked interesting, too interesting almost, to be on this shipful of little, lonely people.. And it was obvious to her that he, like herself, was no more interested in their tour companions than in a PTA convention. She resolved to meet him and make him speak to her, and hoped he wasn't with the blonde girl who sat at his table and wore that vacant, moody expression on her attractive face.
Clint remembered Katrina from the boat. And as he dressed for an afternoon on the beach, he found himself hoping to meet her. It was the second day since they had arrived on this godforsaken little island, with its swarm of yammering tourists and crowds of wretched, underfed natives.
Two days and only one incident from Shirley, and that had turned out better than he could have hoped. He had come up from breakfast, after brushing aside the polite overtures of a hotel staffer, who acted as though Clint needed an artificial friend to get through his vacation.
But when he came into his room, he heard the sounds of a male voice protesting something or other. Opening the door that separated his room from Shirley's, Clint saw his sister standing with uncombed hair, dressed only in a short bathrobe. The robe, as usual, hung partly open, each side of it suspended from a darkly studded breast. It was Shirley's standard posture of intimidation. This time she was intimidating a young native bellhop who had brought a breakfast cart up to her room. Clint laughed to himself as he took in the picture of the youth flattened against his sister's door, the dark eyes at once terrified and appealing to him.
"Lo siento mucho, senor," the bellhop babbled. "Por favor la senora..." he tried to explain, spreading his hands in a terrified appeal to Clint.
"It's okay," Clint assured him, letting him out the door. "Traigame el doctor del hotel," he asked the youth, who nodded and fled down the carpeted hall.
This was one weapon he had now over Shirley, he realized. His Spanish, flawed as it was, could give him some amount of control over his errant sister.
When the hotel doctor arrived, Clint explained that his sister needed a sedative. Shirley just sulked and sat on her bed, the robe still open, revealing a long vertical scroll of female flesh. She offered no resistance to the needle, which, the doctor assured Clint, would put her out like a light for most of the rest of the day.
So this gave him a free day. And since he had already sized up the attractions and lack of virtues of San Dozes, Clint had decided to make the most of it. That meant seeking out the striking girl he remembered from the boat. She'd be a vacation in herself, Clint thought, particularly if she was as much on the lam as she seemed to be. It would be impossible, of course, to try and meet her with Shirley around. Her greatest horror shows in the last few years had been thrown when she suspected or knew that her brother was trying to carry on with a girlfriend when her sick jealousy inspired her to the most shameless and flagrant exhibitions of wantonness or addiction.
Things have a way of happening right on a vacation, Clint thought when, after walking the length of the beach, he spied a figure he thought resembled the girl he was looking for. Typical, he smiled to himself, as he squinted in the sun up at the rocks where she lay out of sound and almost out of sight of the stockyard-like beach.
He circled back up the beach road, trotting along for nearly a mile in his bathing trunks and sport shirt. Then, figuring where she would be, he left the road and started down the rocky bluffs which overhung the blue-satin Caribbean sea.
His judgment was still good as good as it had been in the Marines, where his patrol had always come out of the war games untouched. He dropped lightly down the rocks and stopped on a ledge that overhung hers by about twelve feet.
Peering over cautiously, he nearly swallowed his breath. There she was, stretched out on a pad of several hotel towels she had pitched on the rocks. In spite of the height of her chosen spot from the beach below there were small pools of sea water in the crevices around her. And Clint could see the jagged ravine which had tossed the surf-spray up to these heights. But what really took his breath away was the sight of her luscious back and legs, turned to the sun like a pagan flesh-offering for solar roasting.
He admired the sight of her long, beautifully muscled legs and tawny back for as long as he dared. She lay still, melting under the hot sun, her hands folded under her face and the straps of her bikini halter lying out to either side of her. Clint took a small stone and flicked it down into one of the tide pools. Drawing back, he heard the plop and her simultaneous startled breath as the warm salt water spattered her glistening body. He waited until she had settled down again and then, like a small boy, lobbed another pebble into a different pool. This time he pushed forward through the scrub to watch her reaction.
She stiffened when the water hit her, but lay without moving for a minute. Clint almost imagined he could see her ears working, and he tried to suppress his breathing. Then her hands swung behind her and quickly knotted the halter around her back. One of her arms delved into a straw beach-bag. Clint couldn't quite figure it. Leaning forward to see more of the scene, he inadvertently rustled the brush that marked his hiding place.
In one swift motion, the girl swung into a sitting position, jerking her hand from the beach-bag. Clint found himself simultaneously staring into her beautiful, blazing eyes, and into the muzzle end of a short professional-looking pistol.
"Whoa," he cried, coming out of the bushes above her. "I surrender. Let's not declare war."
The gun dropped from its aim on him. The girl's brown face tossed the silky black hair out of its eyes and broke into a broad grin. Clint clambered down the rocks and jumped the final few feet to her rock roost.
"Didn't mean to interrupt," he joked. "You always pull that thing when a low-flying bird comes by?"
"Only when I suspect that it might be a bird of prey," answered Katrina, snapping the safety and putting the gun away. "I don't know why, but I've been kind of expecting that I'd see you before long," she said, digging further into the beach-bag. "Like a drink cold gin? It's a bargain down here."
"Great," Clint nodded. "Looks as though you were expecting someone."
"Anyone with the guts to come along and relieve my boredom," she smiled. "It's only been two days, but I feel like I've spent half my life on this island for East Village rejects."
"My sympathies exactly," Clint toasted her, clacking his plastic cup with the cool liquid in it against hers.
"Take your shirt off and get some sun," she offered, shifting her sumptuously sculptured body on the towel to make room for him. She saw his eyes flick over her and knew how hard it was for him to be polite. Not many men kept their cool completely when confronted with a body like hers. This much she knew from the last few years of company with professional lechers.
"Sing for your cocktail," she offered. "Let's find out about each other. We might be the only hope for each other on this whole bloody island."
"Fair enough," Clint grinned, stripping off his shirt and exposing his lean but well-muscled chest and arms. Who knows, he thought to himself as they fell to talking and joking, it might really turn out to be a vacation after all. Anything that took Shirley's problems off his mind qualified! And in the course of the afternoon, Katrina's company abstracted Clint from his entire world of worries.
* * *
Not that they weren't developing. For Shirley had come out of the sedative by early afternoon. And she was restless. The heat bothered her, made her itch all over, made her, in fact, want to sweat more. Sweat the restlessness and itching right out of her body.
like a sleepwalker she got out of bed and paraded around her room for a while, admiring her body in the hotel's thoughtfully provided full-length mirrors. Then she sat on a stool in front of one of them, brushing her long honey hair. This ritual always stimulated her slightly, and she playfully pushed and pinched her breasts until their dusky tips hardened and pulsed. But before she got further into her special private ceremony, Shirley's mind flicked back to the bellhop that morning. How that young brown body had excited her. Not that she hadn't had them before in the course of her New York slumming.
But she wanted a body like that now! A boyish, brown body dressed in starchy white linen. Shirley got off the stool and crossed to her dressing table. With trembling hands she smeared some lipstick on, disfiguring her lovely face. Then she emptied a palmful of cheap perfume, which she kept hidden from Clint, into her hand and rubbed it over her breasts and body. She opened a suitcase and took out a hot-weather dress, slipping it over her body without stopping to apply underclothing first. She slithered into a pair of sandals and, taking one last look at how good she looked, whirled out of the room.
The hotel was virtually deserted, all the guests having sought relief from the heat on the beaches and the help having returned to their siestas. Shirley wandered from the lobby through the dining room, taking some fruit from a sideboard. Cautiously, she peered into the kitchen and then entered. All the cooks were at the other end, preparing the evening meal, and she slipped between the high aluminum tables toward a back door.
Then she was outside, in a great walled yard full of delivery trucks and mountains of garbage, which buzzed with the droning of a million fattened flies.
Shirley walked along the exterior wall of the hotel, pushing through the tropical undergrowth, where apparently no one ever came, except to pick up rubbish dropped from the upper-story windows. Then she stopped. She heard what sounded like a woman's voice expressing great excitement. The noises came from a window just above her head.
Shirley raced instinctively back to the kitchen yard. She grabbed a metal garbage can and dragged it back through the brush to where she had been. Inverting it and positioning it under the window, she clambered up on its dented metal bottom. This brought her eyes a few inches higher than the sill of the open window, and her eyes grew saucer-shaped with what they saw.
For she was looking into Boulo's office. And true to his afternoon routine, Boulo was playing his sadistic game with his special staffer, Alya.
Shirley's excited eyes drank in the sight of the native girl bending over the arm of the sofa, her legs spread apart to reveal from a rear view what Shirley could only inspect in herself from the front, before a mirror. She licked her lips, noting the welts that covered the victim's brown buttocks, and her eyes darted to the sweating fat man who danced from one foot to the other, dressed only in his b.v.d.'s, slashing at the hunched-over figure with his whistling leather strap.
The noise of his curses, mingled with his victim's entreaties and cries of pleasure, was music to Shirley's ears. She hoisted herself up on tiptoe, straining her body and thrusting her face through the window in an effort to get closer to the twisted, carnal performance. She could feel each stinging, lacerating blow of the strap as if it were landing on her own buttocks, and her mouth watered as she fed off the spectacle of the girl's writhing body her wriggling legs and sobbing back, which met in the crowning sacrifice of the upended brown buttocks.
Shirley's body began burning and her breath became heavier, as the spectacle of lust ignited the fires of her own, which were always waiting for the stirring. She forced herself against the rough wood of the window-sill, mashing her breasts in an effort to quiet their excited throbbing. Her hips threatened to betray her as her legs squirmed against each other.
One of her hands flew to her mouth, where she bit it hard with her teeth to keep from betraying herself by a moan of desire. More than anything, she wanted to be a part of the scene being staged in Boulo's office.
Involuntarily a groan escaped her lips, but neither Boulo nor his mistress-victim heard it. For Boulo had flung away the strap and, like a great tortoise, was struggling out of his shorts. Leaning against the window, she sought with one hand, pushing up her dress as she tottered on top of the garbage can.
She was being driven to animal madness by desire. Because now, Boulo, giving a shrill cry of conquest, had leapt naked across his office and flung himself on the girl, who was prostrated over the sofa. Shirley closed her eyes momentarily, feeling with anguished empathy the pain of the brown-skinned girl as Boulo landed on her back and drove himself between her tautly braced legs. Furiously, she abused herself, grinding her teeth to keep from moaning as she kept her eyes riveted on the fat man, who bounced up and down on the brown body, which writhed like a fish under his bizarre punishment.
Then, just when she thought she'd collapse, Shirley was distracted by a noise next to her. Whipping her head around, she saw a native boy standing transfixed next to her, his ferret-like eyes shooting from the garbage can he had come to recover to the incredible sight of Shirley herself.
She didn't pause for an instant. But whinnying through her teeth, her nostrils flaring with excitement, practically bounded off the garbage can, even as the youth started to backtrack. By the time he had turned to run away through the brush, Shirley was on him, dragging him to the ground in an improvised but frenzied tackle. Her hands tore at his cotton trousers as he protested wildly but mutely.
And then she rolled back on the ground, sinking her claw-like fingers into his flesh and dragging him over on top of her. Before he knew what had happened, the youth found himself clutched between the frantic woman's legs, found himself on a pitching, bucking volcano of want.
Abruptly a change came over him as his body came into contact with her molten flesh. He wriggled out of his white beach pants, and Shirley relaxed her hold and pulled her dress up, giving him an unobstructed path to pleasure. She grabbed him and pulled him to her, thrusting herself up to the ministrations that her body clamored for.
And then he came to her. Was knotted in her arms and legs, pumping away with youthful fortitude as her nails and teeth sank into him. United only by their passion and mounting lust, the American tourist and native kitchen boy rolled and writhed in their dank, tropical bed of leaves and undergrowth, each desperately striving to fulfill the tempestuous drive they had spurred in the other.
* * *
Clint sang lustily in the shower as he readied himself for dinner. What a great day! "Everything's turning out fine," he bellowed to the tiled walls, scrubbing off the salt and suntan oil from the afternoon's activity.
What a find that Katrina was, he thought dizzily, shaking the water out of his ears and looking at himself in the mirror. And you deserve her too, if anybody does, you hapless son-of-a-bitch, he told himself gleefully.
For the first time in years, he had really enjoyed himself. Not only was Katrina a living doll, and he had come pretty close to some pretty amazing women, but she was just about everything he thought he'd always wanted in a woman.
Yeah, mon, he hummed, after the island fashion. She could hold her liquor, talk intelligently without hang-ups, tell a good joke, and was athletic besides. It had been great, and he was looking forward to tomorrow.
That afternoon, after sunbathing and getting to know each other over the icy thermos of gin, they had walked along the cliffs until they were well out of town and then rented a native boat for a pack of cigarettes and gone rowing further around the island, until they found a secluded beach to swim from. Oddly enough, even watching her graceful body, with its dolphin-like muscles, arch over the side of the boat into the jewel-like water, Clint had not felt that aroused. More like awed, in the presence of a female who was not only sexy, but a hell of a lot more besides.
He had actually had fun, he reflected, and for a while forgotten about Shirley. Who was God knows where? Which was just as well. Katrina, or Kat as he was already calling her, had asked him who that blonde was he had seemed to be with on the boat, and Clint had shrugged it off. She was no one, he explained, just some mixed-up girl he had run into somehow.
Katrina hadn't looked all that convinced. But she had admitted, at the end of the afternoon, that she was glad to hear it. "I could really grow awfully fond of a guy like you, Clint," she had said without any coyness. "But I'm never going to let a man screw me up or put me on again!"
Maybe it would have been better to have explained about Shirley right then and there, he thought now. But maybe Katrina wouldn't have understood, or, if he had really explained the whole truth, that might have ended the whole thing right there. Clint had been around enough to know that women had a low tolerance in general for behavior such as Shirley's. He'd have to work it out, somehow Katrina was just too terrific to let slip through his fingers. Clint had tried to walk this tight wire before, without much success. And he saw it stretched before him again now.
Clint had had one masterful idea as he went down to dinner. Shirley had come in, looking like she had wrestled an army of Cossacks in a dung heap, but Clint hadn't wanted to speak to her to question her. "Come down to the bar when you're ready for chow," he said. "I'll be around." He went out of the room so fast that he didn't hear Shirley's usual "okie-dokie, brother baby."
Downstairs he summoned the head bartender and explained the idea that had just seized him. He showed the man a picture of Shirley and made him promise that he'd personally mix any drink the lady ordered. "Every time she orders another, dilute it more and add bitters anything to conceal it," he ordered. A twenty-dollar bill clinched the deal, and Clint felt relatively relieved. If Shirley turned to the bar for solace, as he hoped she would, at least she'd have a hard time getting plowed except in her mind, which really didn't matter.
He kept out of sight when Shirley came downstairs, looking ravishing in a Suzie Wong-type silk sheath. He knew the dress with one gesture, Shirley could reveal practically her whole body, and often had, the last time when Clint was being interviewed by a Reuters bureau chief, who wanted to hire him for some special assignments.
He kept himself hidden until Shirley had made it to the bar and, sure enough, after a few drinks, made a new friend. The guy looked like an encyclopedia salesman, but Clint figured she was in good hands and knew from past history that Shirley would let the guy escort her to dinner.
That left him free, once he saw them sit down for dinner, to join Katrina for dinner on the hotel terrace. There, over a long meal and champagne, which he somehow felt justified in ordering, he and Kat told each more of their lives and misfortunes. He had to give it to her, Clint thought, as Kat related her story of the last few years, including the guy who had trampled all over her. Honesty was at a premium these days, but Kat seemed to have a good stock of it, on top of all her other virtues.
For his own part, Clint left out everything about Shirley, telling Kat of his few hard-hitting successes in journalism. The evening was so perfect he couldn't think of bringing up the subject of Shirley, although it gnawed at him not to.
Glowing with good food and drink and the mild heat of the evening, Clint was becoming entranced with Katrina. He wanted to forget everything else. Where he had seen an athletic, lovely woman this afternoon, he now beheld an enchanting and deeply stimulating portrait of femininity. And he felt Katrina was responding to him in the same way. As simple a gesture as lighting a cigarette, the contact of their hands brushing briefly against one another, brought a pause to both of them.
And later, when the usual syrupy band started playing on the terrace, they rose without a word to dance. It had been a long time since Clint had danced with such a woman. Felt a warm lush body pressed lightly against his the intimacy of swelling breasts and curving thighs swishing against him as they floated around the terrace.
It seemed as if they weren't even moving after a while. Kat floated against him, the musky smell of her mingled with delicate perfume tingling in his nostrils; the wisps of silky hair at her temples trailing against his cheek; and always her body, its urgent lightness inadvertently teasing his own. Just floating, it seemed to Clint, as he held the bewitching girl in his arms. Floating out of time and out of mind.
"Clint, babeeee!" came Shirley's voice through the cloud, going down his spine like a straight razor on granite. There she was, his psychopath of a sister, wrenching the dreaming Katrina out of his arms.
"You promised me the first dance, dincha, baby?" Shirley laughed, throwing her head back crazily and laughing at the startled couple. "Lemme show this broad how a girl should really dance with a man." She grabbed Clint just as the music changed to an up tempo beat. And before he could react, she had hugged him fiercely to her, forcing him to go through the motions of dancing to keep himself from falling.
Clint looked wildly for Katrina, who stood merely straightening her dress, with all the indifference in the world. He couldn't think of anything to say and was so confused that when Shirley pointedly thrust a knee between his legs, working her leg against him in a manner that raised eyebrows all the way to the band, he hardly had the presence of mind to slap her away.
Then, all in an instant, Shirley had locked her arms around his neck, and Clint realized with horror and fury that she had pulled the flap of her sheath loose; realized that she was wearing nothing else and that to thrust her away would mean that the dress would fall away, leaving her half-naked in his arms. Impotent and confused, he grabbed her and supported her deliberately sagging body with one arm. And then Shirley had lunged up and locked her mouth to his, kissing him with a wild show of passion, even as he tried to break loose; as his eyes met Katrina's, who had given the apparently unashamed couple a last indifferent glance before walking off the terrace into the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
Clint had finally managed to wrestle Shirley off the terrace and get her upstairs. There, for the first time in his life, he had hit her, slapped her squarely across her laughing face as she teased him and mocked him.
"Brother baby's got a new sweetheart; uh-huh, can't pull the wool over my eyes."
"I'm warning you," Clint spat out, fighting the impulse to slug her again. "You're going to behave. I'm not playing anymore, understand?"
"Sure, brother," Shirley smiled, placing her hands on her hips and looking at him saucily. The cheek where he had slapped her was turning redder. And the flap of her dress still hung away, exposing a triangle of her flesh with one impertinent breast right in the middle. "You know I'll behave, just as long as you don't try to ignore me."
Clint spun on his heel and stalked out of the room, slamming the door on his sister's laughter.
Several minutes later, he was knocking on Katrina's door. It opened, a few inches, and Clint started back. Katrina was standing there, apparently fresh out of the shower, with only a full-length towel pressed to her body.
"It's rather late," she said in an indifferent tone.
"Look, Kat, you've got to let me explain. Let me in, please," Clint urged. Katrina merely turned around and walked away from the open door, giving Clint a careless glimpse of her twitching buttocks, which appeared snow-white against her deeply sun-bronzed skin. Clint walked through the door, trying to regain his composure.
"Look," he started again, "that girl downstairs I don't know what she wants. She was roaring drunk. She just happened to pick on me."
"All right, baby, now look yourself," Katrina suddenly said, abruptly facing him. Clint swallowed hard, for the topmost few inches of the towel had fallen down over her arm, exposing the bountiful bulges of her half-tanned bosom.
"Don't try to sucker me," she shot out. "The girl knows you, knows your name, and from all I saw, knows exactly what you respond to. I don't care who she is or what you do with her. It's your business just don't come around whining for equal time."
"Goddamnit!" Clint exploded, "you don't know the first thing about it."
"I don't need to know. Goodnight, and thanks for dinner," Katrina said, re-arranging the towel with one hand and gesturing toward the door with the other.
Clint reacted by slamming the door shut with a crash. He didn't know who he was really madder at Shirley, himself or the stunning girl who regarded him archly from behind the towel. All he knew was that he was crazy for her more aroused by her than any girl he had ever met and he was in danger of losing her. But the specter of Shirley, and what she was, hung over his confusion and frustration.
"Please, Kat," he started, trying to recover himself, "it's not anything like you suspect it is; it's a screw-up, really. There's nothing between the girl and me, I swear." He moved closer to Katrina, who was lighting a cigarette, looking as if she didn't care whether he dropped dead on the spot.
"Kat it's you I want; you've got to believe me. Nothing seems important except you."
She looked up at him, and sat carefully on the edge of her bed, being careful to keep the towel hugged to her body as she crossed her legs. "Who was she?" she asked him.
Clint waved his hands in desperation. Tell her, urged a voice within him. Never, clamored another. "I don't know, honest," he lied, feeling himself sink into a hopeless mire. "Look, she was loaded and she jumped me, and the only thing that matters is that she came between us."
"What's there to come between?" Katrina said, trying to affect an icy tone of remoteness.
Clint recognized it for what it was. She had given him his cue, intentionally or not. With a swift motion, he stepped forward and, taking the cigarette from her hand before she had time to react, curled an arm around her and pulled her up to him.
"This!" he whispered hoarsely, wrapping her to him, as her jaw dropped open in surprise. She tried to resist the pressure of his hug, arching her back and pushing away with her free arm. Her head jerked away from his as he sought her. But Clint was not to be stopped now. The feel of her body against him, resisting him, emboldened him all the more. And taking the back of her head with one hand, he forced her to meet his lips with her own.
The minute their mouths met, Katrina went slack in his arms. But only for a second. Then she seemed to stiffen as his tongue parted her lips with a passionate frenzy. Her head inclined, and her eyes shut slowly, and she opened her mouth to him, returning his kiss. The hand that held the towel struggled free of the embrace, and she circled him with both arms, pulling him closer to her, working her body to the contours of his, breast to breast and thigh to thigh.
They rocked back and forth for what seemed like an eternity, as the kiss went deeper and deeper, establishing their common will and need. At last Katrina turned her head away and tried to regain control of her breathing. Clint could feel her heart pounding against his own.
"That's quite an argument," she said, looking back and up into his blazing eyes.
"It's the truth," he said, going for her again, and this time meeting her scarlet mouth halfway. Katrina sounded a long, low moan, which resonated between them as they ground against one another for the second time. The sound of it quickened Clint's blood and sent a responsive stab of excitement through him.
Together they tottered back as he forced his weight forward, until they fell slowly to the bed, Katrina pulling his weight down on top of herself.
"Kat," muttered Clint, breaking away and raining kisses on her tossing face. "Oh, Kat, baby..."
"Don't stop!" she hissed, seizing his head and guiding him down her neck. "Don't stop now!" she entreated over and over, as Clint snaked along the delicate bones of her breast and shoulders, leaving a thousand lightning kisses lingering on her skin.
He felt one of her bare legs twine over his, her foot restlessly sliding down the inside of his thigh. Responding to the pressure of her hands, he bent his head lower, raising himself for a second to strip away the towel between them.
He gasped when he had done so. Not since that night as a teen-ager, when he had first seen a girl's body, had he beheld anything so splendid as Katrina's naked charms. Torn between looking and kissing, he raised and lowered his head, devouring her with his eyes all the time.
It was almost with reverence that he approached the breathtaking presence of her breasts. They seemed to float beneath him, like snowy mountains glimpsed from an airliner in fog, each flawless mound thrusting its symmetry up to his eager mouth. He dove down and closed his lips over one of the large rosebud nipples, and felt her chest contract as she let out a quick sigh of pleasure. Then, tearing himself away from the one, he went to the other and then back and forth, like a metronome gone wild, feasting on both of the rich, fertile cones.
In no time at all, their rose-tips had surged to life, growing tough and resistant to his increasingly harsh kisses.
Katrina's hands were now raking his back, pulling his shirt out of his pants, and pushing down the small of his back to increase his pressure on her. His head swam back up to meet her trembling, wet lips, and they locked in a renewed fervor of kissing.
As she arched under him, whimpering with pleasure, Clint grabbed her and pulled her over on top of him, rolling on his back. Her body slid into place on him, its nakedness burning through his clothing. With his hands now free, he began to cover her with caresses, trailing down her back to her perfect buttocks, then up her tummy and sides. As she lifted herself clear of him, his hands found the heavy twin fruits which hung down from her golden form, and he molded them to a new stage of swollen arousal.
She squirmed on him like a cobra now. Her hands fought his shirt free from his body, and as he increased his manipulations, she began kissing him wildly. At the same time, her rapid fingers loosed his belt and trousers.
They seemed to be fighting each other now as Clint shed the last of his clothing and rolled back over on the snapping, clutching amazonian brunette. But in their frenzied reality, they were working for the same thing to the same end, as Katrina opened herself to him, and Clint scrambled between her honey thighs with the rapacity of a young bull.
Katrina's heels skidded on the sheets as she lunged up to meet Clint. Then, with a cry and a wild surge of mutual pleasure, they were together, locked body to body. With the ageless energy that built empires and destroyed cathedrals, Clint raged on her, forcing Katrina's body to react with convolutions of ecstasy. One minute her legs waved in the air, and the next came bearing down on him in a scissoring embrace of lust. On and on they churned, spurring each other to the dream-world of relief neither had known in so long, and even longer, until their exhausted, tremor-wracked bodies could move no more.
* * *
Clint awoke the next morning to a toe prodding his ribs through the thin sheet that was standard bedding for the tropical nights.
"Wake up, brother-o. Your loving sister has something to tell you." Clint came to groggily, not realizing where he was for a minute, feeling the memory of Katrina's impact on his body like the last dissolving traces of a dream. But he saw that he was in his own bedroom, and working his eyes further open, made out the figure of his sister looking down at him.
"That must have been a long walk, baby you look absolutely exhausted. I just wanted to tell you that I'll see you at dinner. A gentleman's offered to take me on a donkey-cart ride 'round the island." Shirley turned and skipped toward the door. "Ta, brother," she sang out, " be a good lad."
Clint winced as the door slammed. He sat in bed for several minutes, smoking a cigarette and trying to recover impressions of the night before. Then it hit him what Shirley had said that if she'd been telling the truth, he had a whole day free with Katrina. At the same time, he felt a new sense of guilt that he hadn't been honest with Katrina; all he could pray for now was that Shirley didn't find them out. No, he thought, that wasn't the point. At some time or other, he was going to have to deal with it. But he sure as hell didn't know how at the moment.
"Mr. Westwood," called the man at the hotel desk as Clint bounced into the lobby, "a message!"
Clint read the note from Katrina and smiled. He was one step ahead of her, he thought. It was an auspicious sign.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back on the rock ledge, lobbing a pebble into the tide pool.
"Hey, I surrender," said Katrina, sitting up and holding her bikini to her chest, while shading her eyes against the sun. "Come on down and collect your spoils."
Clint bounded down the rocks onto her roost and took the plastic cocktail cup she handed to him.
"To the most beautiful girl in the world," he smiled, kissing her lightly on her salty mouth. "Hey, you were fantastic last night!"
"So were you, baby. Just think how bad off we'd be if you hadn't seized the initiative."
"Ssshhh!" Clint remonstrated. He leaned over and made a mock show of peeking down her halter. "Hiding something?"
"Not from you darling," she answered, calling his bluff by abruptly tossing the halter aside. Clint nearly choked on his mouthful of gin as the sunlight bounced off the satin white mounds into his eyes. They were even better than he remembered them, standing out against her glistening, sun-darkened body.
He was overcome with an immediate sense of desire. He took her cup and set both of them down in a tide pool, where the water was still cold. Then, without a word, he pushed her back on her pad of towels, covering one breast with one hand and bending his lips to the other.
"Hey," Katrina laughed, "kind of early for all this, isn't it? Oh, Clint," she gasped, as his tongue circled one of the sun-warmed nipples. "Oh, baby, you're so good to me, oh, Clint!" poured out Katrina, sliding her hands up his back and curling her fingers on his shoulders as he lathered her soft strawberry-topped cones with kisses.
Clint reached down and pulled the knot free where the triangular bottom of the bikini was tied to her hips. She lifted her buttocks clear of the towels as he jerked the flimsy cloth from her and tossed it aside.
"Oh, Clint, oh yes, sweetheart, oh please," she babbled as he stopped his kisses and caresses long enough to shuck his own shorts and sportshirt.
"Like me here in the sun?" Clint teased her. "Sure you want to go through with it, right here in broad daylight?"
Katrina didn't answer him straight out. Instead she grabbed him and literally flung him down. "Hey," he protested, as he felt the hard rocks under the towels, "take it easy."
He fought her playfully, but Katrina was determined to show him that daylight or no, her appetite was unchanged. like a young lioness with its half-alive prey, she wrestled Clint over on his back, her naked brown body shining and rippling in the sun.
Before Clint knew what had happened, she was on top of him, straddling him with her lush intimacy. But he wasn't slow to catch on when she leaned forward with a challenging grin, pinning his arms to either side of him. He willingly sought the heavy breasts, which were dangled above him now, their dark extremities pulsing out with a turgid fullness.
And he knew what Katrina was up to now. For half-smiling and half-grimacing, she was working her body desperately against his.
Then she had found him, and Clint felt a thrill of pleasure. It was her show, Clint thought to himself, trying his best to relax as Katrina began swinging her body through the air in a wild, sensuous rhythm.
Now and then Clint reached out to fondle a breast, teasing them as they jiggled and flopped with her excited motions, or pulled her down to exchange a long, searching kiss, only to release her as she struggled to sit erect again and swing back into action. What a girl, Clint thought, as he lay there finally, feeling the punishment and pleasure his body was taking from Katrina's inspired athletics.
He felt immense pride and satisfaction as he lasted through her first cycle of spasms and cries, helping to support her.
And then, with a fierce smile and renewed grip on him, she accelerated her hips again, churning and stirring both their bodies to new needs, bouncing up and down with unrestrained and increasingly unsteady vigor until Clint felt his own back bowing with unbearable tension felt her falter and then go on; and finally, when both of them were clenching their teeth against screaming out and grasping each other's hands, she collapsed against him as the passion flowed out of their sweating, aching bodies.
During the next several days, Clint barely started getting used to her wild and unpredictable gestures. They made love constantly, whenever the impulse seized them up in the cliff-protected roost by day, on the beach by night, even in a back corridor of the hotel one night when Katrina, who had been playfully teasing him during the evening's dancing, suddenly pulled him into the shadows to a back hallway and, raising her dress, pulled down her panties and took him to her with quick, hard loving.
But the love-making was only a part of their days and evenings. Every hour that Clint could manage to free himself of Shirley, who, it seemed, was actually taking care of herself without scandal, he rendezvoused with Kat, to swim or go boating, or buy ice cream and stroll through the less-crowded markets of the main village, or sneak away for a cool drink in a mostly-native canteen down by the further end of the beach.
And every hour that Clint was with her, he felt a renewing a new kind of love coming alive in him, shooting through every fiber of his heart and brain and being. And he realized with increasing certainty that his feelings for Katrina were not the product of a vacation coincidence, but rather his response to the most complete and challenging woman he had ever met.
Katrina felt much the same way, if not more so. To her, Clint's strength and good humor, even his gentleness and tact, were qualities she had become unused to seeing in men consorting as she had been with people for whom men and women were roles to be cast and favors to be used.
She felt herself, almost against her will, growing more deeply fond of Clint with every day. And she was unbelievably happy to have found someone who shared not only her tastes and interests but, for once, could match her and overcome her on any ground.
Katrina wondered if she and Clint were not terribly conspicuous to their vacation-mates the drab, lonely girls who smiled weakly at her, and the paunchy, sick-looking men who nodded to her, and whose eyes she could feel drilling through her clothing.
True, they weren't seen together all that much in fact, rarely. And this had continued to bother Katrina. For Clint did have something else he kept disappearing to. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at dinner, always at night, after making love. He had told her it was his writing, but Katrina wasn't sure. It was only because she felt herself falling in love with him so fast that she didn't press him on the matter. But in the back of her mind, she had not forgotten the strange blonde girl Clint had seemed to be with, or at least, who seemed to want to be with him.
Another thing that bothered her about Clint's absences was that it left her prey to the hotel staff, who, to say the least, were obnoxious in their solicitations. It seemed she couldn't eat a meal or even walk through the lobby without this girl named Alya coming up to her and asking her if everything was all right, if she was enjoying herself, seeing everything she had wanted to see, etc.
Katrina thought it odd, because she gave the chicly garbed staffer enough credit for being able to perceive that she, Katrina, was no wall-flower or lost midwestern castaway. And she had been politely firm about the girl's offers to help her plan sightseeing tours, etc. But it had been annoying having her popping up at all hours of the day, asking how she felt and so forth. Katrina had noticed that she wasn't the only one singled out for these attentions, which resembled the "Our Millionth Visitor" approach. Every guest seemed to be in the custody of one of these informal, but prying, creatures.
It was a nuisance and Katrina had discussed it with Clint. He only told her to do what he had done go to the manager, if it got any worse. That was how he had dumped the little man who seemed to have been assigned to his welfare.
The only trouble there was that Katrina had met the manager, Mr. Boulo, and had been more than put off by him. He had come along her first day on the beach, as she was lying there sunbathing. And had the rudeness to walk in a complete circle around her, obviously studying her body. On top of that, he had given her the greasiest and most lecherous of smiles when she had glared at him. So there was no real help there.
The only answer, really, she thought, was to bag Clint full-time and try either to get him to take his mind off his work, or convince him that he loved her as much as she did him, and that they were wasting time spending so much of it apart.
If Katrina had even gotten the truth out of Clint, she would have found him in complete agreement. But lately, after the few days' grace he had, Clint's hands were becoming full again full of the troubles caused by his nut of a sister.
Clint had started to doubt Shirley's stories about the book salesman or whoever he was. It didn't seem to him that anyone who lavished quite so much attention on his sister by day, as her story went, would turn up quite so alone in the bar every night. So, with the old sense of weariness and foreshadowed doom, Clint had started asking around, searching for the old trail.
Picking it up from the beginning, Clint got hints of how Shirley had started carrying on day and night with some of the youths who worked at the hotel. "Mees Shod', " was the name she had come to be known by, apparently. And Clint, from past experience, knew that a fin here and a fin there would lead him to his sister.
In spite of all past experience, however, Clint was not quite prepared for what he found one day. He had left Katrina to go grab a nap late one afternoon. And he himself had been starting up the stairs from the lobby when a youth dressed in simple whites had approached him. "Meester Clint, you want to know where Mees Shorl' is at, come with me, please."
Clint turned and followed the boy out of the hotel, around the corner. Then suddenly, the boy darted off and in a second was nowhere to be seen. But as Clint stood, puzzled, an older, half-caste looking man approached him.
"I onnerstan' you want the white American woman, yes?" Clint was asked, the question being accompanied by a gust of foul breath.
"That's right," he answered. "Where is she?"
"Not so fast, gringo," cautioned the man, smiling hideously. "The hotel makes it hard for a man to earn an honest leeving. They are very streect. You will pay me something for my troubles?"
Christ, thought Clint, as he counted out another five dollars and deposited it in the outstretched claw. The money disappeared as if into a vacuum outlet somewhere in the tattered clothes. What the hell has Shirley gotten herself into this time, he wondered, although he could have told himself if he'd wanted to.
And he would have been right. For the man, tugging his sleeve, led Clint across the street, where there was a cluster of little huts scattered through a thick bamboo and palm grove. Clint had always assumed it was where the hotel help lived. The man led him along a path and then stopped in front of one of the huts.
"One half of an hour, senor," he said, pointing to the hut and then to his wrist, to which was fastened the kind of multiple chronometer usually associated with sky-divers or tactical frogmen. Clint pushed him aside and bounded up the rickety stairs. He pushed the door open and took one stride in before stopping. Then he leaned against the door for support, holding his head in his other hand. For there in the hut was Shirley, all right. Stretched out naked on a dingy mattress, surrounded by empty bottles and crawling insects. From the single window of the dwelling came the weak fluttering of an old kitchen fan. It was too much, he thought. Why not just shoot her or strangle her right here? And let it go at that?
"Shirley," he said quietly, instead. "Shirley, get up. We're going home."
"Brother, babeee!" she gurgled, flopping over half on her stomach to look at him. "Fancy seeing you here come to visit your own sister as she lies in regal pomp and ceremony. How sweet," she chortled drunkenly. "How very sweet!"
Disregarding her, Clint searched for her clothes. He found a soiled dress and, yanking her to her feet, managed to get most of her into it.
"Wheee!" she cried. "It's just like old times, with brother baby and me. Ummm! My devoted servant," she beamed, and before Clint knew what was happening, she was shaking the dregs of one of the bottles all over both of them.
Clint let her have it straight across the face, which shut her up for a minute. Rum, he thought, smelling his sopping clothes and looking around the hut. The old man was waiting and rushed up, his face the living portrait of protest. But when he saw the dark clouds of anger on Clint's, he faded out of their path.
Clint's concern was to get into the hotel and upstairs, where he could get her sobered up and straightened out. He took a side door into the hotel and dragged Shirley forcibly up the steps. He didn't see Katrina, who was just rounding a corner of the lobby and who stopped dead at the sight of her lover and his companion streaking up the stairs.
When Clint had gotten Shirley into his room, he noticed she still had a bottle of the cheap rum she had grabbed from the hut. He took the bottle from her and inspected it more closely. Pure fire-water, he thought to himself, shooting a glance at his sister. He shook his head sadly as he watched her. For Shirley had pulled the dress open, splitting it down to her waist, forcing her creamy breasts out into the open. They, like the rest of her, were covered with filth, and Clint thought she looked like some hopelessly retarded waif wandering by the railroad tracks.
"Let's go, Shirley," he said. "You've had enough fun."
But she bounced away from him when he grabbed her to get her into the shower. She was giggling, as she always did when she had embarrassed him, and hopped around the room, her breasts jiggling and her matted blonde hair swinging to and fro as she tossed her head. Then she jumped up onto Clint's bed, purposefully mussing her soiled feet on the sheets and dancing around with her skirts lifted up.
Clint caught a glance of himself in the mirror hot, sweaty, unkempt, bottle in hand, which he hadn't even realized. He made a lunge for Shirley and tripped on the throw-rug near the bed. At the instant he fell, two things happened. Shirley pounced on him, fighting him wildly for possession of the bottle she'd been stalling for. And there was a knock on the door.
But before Clint could yell "Wait a minute," the door opened. Clint wrestled Shirley off him, her breasts swatting him in the face as he did so. Heaving himself up on elbow, the bottle still in his hand, he saw Katrina standing in the doorway. He started to speak, then stopped, as he realized what she was seeing the half-naked blonde, the rumpled bed, the bottle-in-his-hand. "Katrina..." he croaked.
"Sorry I wasn't enough for you, baby!" she said, cutting him off, her face suddenly becoming a mask of hurt and fury. "But don't you worry I won't be bothering you again!"
The door slammed. Shirley wrested the bottle from his hand and took a long pull, falling backward with her dress virtually over her face. Clint gave a long groan and rolled out of the bed onto the floor, where he lay thinking for some time.
CHAPTER FIVE
Katrina thought she was alone in her sadness the next day. She did not go to her sunbathing spot. But with a long face, absently curling the ends of her hair in her fingers, she strolled up and down the beach, brooding behind dark glasses. She was utterly confused by the spectacle she had walked in on last night, and heartbroken as well. It was really hard to accept, she thought, over and over that Clint could have seemed so devoted to her and then been taking up with some tart on the side. For in Clint, Katrina had really found a new source of inspiration when it came to men and love, and it was difficult, no matter how hard she'd been jolted, to give up this renewed faith.
To Alya, who spent much of the day watching Katrina from the hotel terrace, it was obvious that the young black-haired beauty was upset. And this fact was important to her, because tonight was Katrina's evening, according to Boulo's schedule, for extracurricular recreation. Alya had known from the beginning that Katrina would be a tough nut to crack, since she was clearly more sophisticated than most of the hotel's guests. For the past few days, Alya had been trying to figure out where this woman's Achilles' heel was, without any great degree of success. In fact, she knew she had come close to being totally rebuffed by her designated guest, on the few occasions when Katrina actually appeared around the hotel.
But after watching her closely, Alya was more confident. For the woman was upset and seemed to be moody. And that made her easier to work with, more suggestion-prone, which was, after all, Alya's business. It must be a man, she thought. Katrina had not gotten any bad news by telegram, she knew, after checking the desk. So what else was there that could turn her smiling face to such a portrait of despair?
Alya walked off the terrace and down to the beach in the direction of the restless pacing figure. She came up behind Katrina quietly and unobtrusively.
"Hello, Miss Nadie," she said in a familiar tone. "How are things going for you today?"
Katrina looked up in surprise at the voice. But for once she was not immediately annoyed by the presence of the lovely hotel employee in her cut-away sheath uniform. After all, she was company, and anything that helped to take her mind off the nightmare scene of last night and its implications was thoroughly welcome.
"Lousy," she replied, after walking on, side by side with the other woman, who it seemed to her was being unusually discreet. Did her confusion and depression show that visibly? she wondered.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Alya. She paused and then decided to hit Katrina right off: "From the way you look, it must be a gentleman that has caused this trouble for you."
Katrina wasn't surprised at the other's conjecture. Somehow it seemed appropriate that the whole world should have divined the truth.
"That's about the size of it," she answered in muted tones. "Woman gets the shaft again same old story; no news."
"Oh now, do not look at it that way," suggested Alya, following up her lead. "It's my opinion that a woman should never put up with a man's bad behavior in general. And specifically, you know, I hate to see a woman guest relate her stay here to the rest of the world."
"Meaning what?" Katrina asked her.
"Well," Alya shrugged, "we look on the island as a place where the normal rules of a male-dominated society don't apply. Everybody's here to enjoy themselves equally. This is no one's world, least of all the men's, here at the island. If one of our woman guests, such as yourself, returns to the mainland feeling that she has not experienced anything unusual, we assume we have failed to provide her with a real vacation."
"Really?" said Katrina, a little baffled by her companion's textbookish conversation.
"Sure. By unusual, we mean anything from the feeling that the sexes are absolutely equal which for many of our guests, you know, is a revelation to experiences which demonstrate such a proposition."
"Why don't you get to the point?" asked Katrina, in an inquisitive but not unfriendly tone.
"Well, Miss Nadie to be straightforward with you: you have the look of someone who's undergone a blow to her dignity here on the island, of the sort one could see every day back in the states. In my opinion, as one woman to another now, I would suggest that the best thing for you to do is let me suggest that you undertake an experience which will restore that dignity."
"Ah," said Katrina, "you're trying to tell me that the hotel keeps a dignity-machine in the basement for jilted lovers?"
"Not quite," laughed the brown-skinned girl, breathing an inward sigh of relief with the knowledge that she had her guest on the hook for sure. "All I can suggest and this is on my own, nothing to do with the hotel is that you let me bring you along tonight to one of the island ceremonies. They can really give a person in your state a lift. The hotel's too respectable, you know, to suggest such things, but they're here, if you know where to look."
Katrina thought the suggestion over as both women strolled farther along the beach. She was trying to imagine what the other was referring to wild dances, midnight clam-digging, some sort of music festival? "What do you mean, the hotel's too respectable?" she asked.
"Just that," Alya replied, innocently. "These ceremonies are, to be frank, completely uninhibited. They can do a lot to restore your perspective on what it means to be a woman. But the hotel won't have any part of them. You know the standard worries about lawsuits from guests who lose their heads."
"Think I'd lose my head?" Katrina asked her.
"I think so," answered the other. "But that's the whole point, isn't it? You're" looking for something to snap you out of your inferiority complex..."
Katrina shot a hard look at her companion.
" ... or whatever it is that's eating you. But, of course, the decision to lose your head is yours. Tell you what: I'll come to the bar tonight after supper, and if you want to go by then, I'll take you along. That gives you the afternoon to think about it. Okay? See you later and cheer up!"
The girl turned and abruptly walked away from Katrina, heading for a group of young spinsters, who greeted her with enthusiasm, yelling corny cliches and waving their plastic golf hats. Katrina stopped and watched her go, the questions she had dying on her lips. Then, bending her head again and walking closer to the surf-line, she thought about the melodrama of the conversation she'd just had. And decided, that whatever it was, Alya's suggestion held true she really needed something to snap her out of her condition.
It was early evening when Clint finally took a shower and shaved. All day long, he'd been lying on his bed with a bottle from room service, trying halfheartedly to drown out his anger and the pain he felt about Katrina. But drinking had never been much of an out for him, so that after a day of swigging and studying his navel, he had forgotten nothing. And nothing had been blurred.
Enough of this, he thought, and headed to get cleaned up before going down to get some supper. He would look for Katrina and somehow get her to listen, and explain the whole thing, he thought. She was sure to understand and would want to listen, if she'd been going through anything near like the hell he had all day.
But at just that moment, Katrina was taking the step she thought would snap her out of her hell. She was sitting in the bar, where Alya, true to her word, had found her after dinner. For the last few minutes, Alya had been trying to explain to Katrina the disclaimer and the contract she had brought with her. And things had almost bogged down for Katrina had gotten justifiably suspicious about all the papers.
"I just don't see what any of this--this disclaimer, my tour contract has to do with a night out on the island, that's all."
"It's simple," Alya started again, trying to keep her cool. "I happen to be an employee of the hotel. If you broke your ankle, say, the hotel doesn't want to be sued. It's just a standard device to protect against everything from pimping to hucksters..."
"But look," Katrina objected. "You tell me that any expenses which I assume means some form of tip I pay to you for the evening are added on to the tour contract here under 'Other expenses,' so that's part of the hotel package. Then, on the other hand, you want me to sign this disclaimer saying that the hotel didn't solicit my interest for any special entertainment. I just don't get it, much less why you have all these papers in the first place."
"What's going on?" came a male voice. Katrina whirled around in her seat and saw Clint standing there, a nervous smile on his face, standing there looking almost meek.
"Clint!..." Katrina exclaimed.
Alya's eyes shot from the man to the woman. This must be the joker, she thought. Entering just in time to blow the show. "Look," Alya said, in a no-nonsense tone, "the hotel knows that some of its guests will get to the unusual things on the island. It's perfectly willing to let the expenses be included in the tour package. But it doesn't want people running off every instant and getting into trouble. If you think you can trust yourself tonight, sign the disclaimer, and let's get going. It's getting late. If not, I'll see you later..."
"Trust yourself to do what?" Clint demanded, edging closer to the table and trying to get a look at the papers. "Katrina?" he said, appealing to the woman, who turned her face away and clenched her hands on the table, "what are you getting into? Look, baby, I've got to talk to you. I've got to explain something."
"Really?" said Katrina, sarcastically. Suddenly, she snapped back to life and remembered what a blow her ego had suffered, and who was responsible.
"Give me the pen," she said, taking the paper from Alya and signing her name to the disclaimer. She enjoyed Clint's visible confusion. It was obvious to her that he had been suffering, and from the earnest expression on his face, she thought for an instant that maybe he was really about to justify himself. But the will for revenge overpowered these abstractions. She gave the papers back to Alya and stood up.
"Kat please, where are you going? I've got to talk to you!" entreated Clint.
"Later, lover," she said in a sarcastic tone. "Mama's going to go out and have a little fun herself. Don't stand around waiting. I'm sure your friend is waiting upstairs." Katrina and Alya sailed out of the bar, leaving Clint with his mouth open, catching flies.
Alya hailed a taxi, and they set out for a ride which lasted about ten minutes. Katrina already felt better, having asserted her independence and told Clint where to go. She was looking forward now to whatever the evening might bring, her hopes and curiosity having been aroused by Alya's hints in the bar.
The taxi seemed to be plunging into absolute darkness, and Katrina couldn't see anything out of the windows. Then, from the sound of the tires and the exhaust noise, she deduced that they had entered some sort of tunnel-affair. The taxi stopped and Alya got out, motioning her to do the same.
Alya grabbed her hand and led her away through the pitch blackness. Katrina heard a door open, and then she stumbled, before adjusting to the fact that they were going up a circular staircase. This was kind of odd, she thought, sort of like the drunken hide-and-seek games they used to have at production parties back in Beverly Hills.
At the top of the stairs, they emerged in some sort of shed. From there, Alya led her out into a courtyard, surrounded by a high white wall of the type that surrounds very big houses and courtyards. She followed Alya across the red-tiled yard and through an elegantly-polished door.
Alya grabbed her hand and pulled her into a sort of closet. "We change here," she whispered.
"Change?" said Katrina. "Into what?"
"Ssshh! Here put this on!" Alya shoved a garment at her. Katrina took it, but didn't move right away. She was watching Alya pull her own sheath off over her head. She noted the brown girl's magnificent body and the fact that she wore nothing under the sheath. Then, as Alya slipped into the new garment, Katrina caught a glimpse of her backside. For a second she thought she was imagining things, but no she was sure she had seen them the welts and stripes that crisscrossed the plump, dusky buttocks. For a minute, Katrina wanted to laugh. It was too silly. like some sort of bizarre East Village put-on, she thought.
But, at Alya's insistence, she complied with the game. She removed her own dress and hung it on one of the many hangers all of which were empty. She reached back and unclasped her bra without thinking. It was only when she had removed it and saw Alya staring at her own prominent breasts, that she wondered why she had done it. What the hell, she shrugged, as Alya nodded and pointed to her panties.
It was like a college initiation. She slipped her fingers under the waistline of her panties and rolled them down her hips, then stepped out of them and placed them with her other clothes. Then she donned the garment Alya had given to her. It was kind of like an Oriental dressing-gown, with very wide, short sleeves which came about half-way to the elbow. Katrina looked at Alya to see how the robe was supposed to be fastened. It was then that she noticed. Alya's wasn't fastened. And she couldn't fasten hers either, because of one simple thing. The way the robe was cut, it came around only to her sides. There just wasn't any more of it to draw in front of one. Alya was smiling at Katrina, watching the message sink in. This was the big hurdle.
Katrina looked down at herself at her breasts, stomach, loins and legs all of which were visible, framed by the robe, which was cut away so widely that it amounted to little more than a cape with sleeves. She looked at Alya and unconsciously admired the way the robe heightened the beauty of Alya's feminine charms.
"They ought to sanforize these," she whispered with a smile. Alya smiled back and nodded. Then, taking Katrina by the hand, she led her out of the closet and down a long tiled hall. Katrina's ears perked up as she heard the sound of drumming music drifting from somewhere in the building. But she didn't feel at all uneasy or alarmed. Somehow, it was too much a combination of the unusual and the ludicrous for her to question it. One thing was for sure in this robe affair, she really felt like an old-time priestess, ready to preside in semi-naked splendor at some pagan ritual.
Alya led her to a door and, opening it, they both slipped through. They were in a large room, dimly lit and deafeningly filled with musical throbbing of several ranks of drums. Katrina looked hard through the darkness and noted that the room was higher at one end, where the music came from. Up there were seated a bunch of bodies, including the musicians. And against the far wall, at the back of the raised level of the room, she could discern two high-backed chairs. She hadn't the vaguest notion of what was going on, and suddenly felt a great reliance on her companion.
Alya was standing motionless, apparently listening to the music. Katrina didn't think they could be seen, standing as they were at the darkened end of the room. But suddenly, out of the ceiling somewhere, came a spotlight, tracking along the length of the room until it bathed both women in a hot circle of white light.
Katrina's immediate instinct was to shrink back out of the glare. But Alya had grasped her hand again and was leading her forward. Dumbly, she complied and followed the other woman up the center of the room. The drumming increased in tempo as they neared the dais and then stopped completely.
She hadn't quite bargained on this, Katrina thought, as Alya led her up onto the dais. They walked through the seated circle of dark bodies toward the wall. Then Alya motioned her to one of the chairs, she herself sitting in the other. Katrina paused and then sat quickly down. Immediately, she crossed her legs, feeling her nakedness acutely. Especially, when she looked around at the circle of men seated below them and saw that, for the most part, each was completely naked. And yet, in spite of this amazing sight, she was reassured, because none of the seated men seemed to be paying her any attention. She shot a look at Alya and saw that the other was sitting completely relaxed, her golden breasts jutting out from the scanty robe and both feet placed firmly on the ground. Being the only white woman present gave Katrina an uneasy sense of prominence, especially seated up in the high chair as she was. But on the other hand, it seemed silly to want to leave, because she seemed to be the only person who was aware both of her identity and her nakedness. Some ceremony, she thought. No wonder the hotel wanted disclaimers.
Then the drums started up again, and Katrina felt her spirits lift as the resonating rhythm vibrated through her body. From somewhere appeared a young native girl, clad in a shirtwaist, who brought Katrina and her companion each a goblet full of a hot liquid. Katrina looked at Alya as she took her cup, and seeing the other smile at her, took a sip. The liquid, whatever it was, went down her throat like lava, searing her insides and falling, it seemed, in a pool deep in her stomach. The sensation was unlike anything she had ever known at once bitter and heavy, yet at the same time like a bubbling sort of hot dressing. Katrina's toes curled, and she could feel herself begin to perspire from the drink, which inflamed and knotted her body from within.
She shook her head, trying to clear her senses. For now the music had settled into a regular, frenzied pattern, and several young-looking men had bounded up from the circle. Katrina clutched the goblet in her hands as they started dancing a few feet from her. She was proud enough of her own body to have respect for physiques in general, and these young men were amply endowed on all counts. She felt an involuntary shiver of desire go through her limbs as her eyes feasted on the spectacle of the contorted, rippling brown bodies that darted and whirled before her.
Then she looked up as the spotlight went on again, tracking to where they had entered the room. Katrina leaned forward in her chair, oblivious of her own nakedness now, as she caught sight of three young nude female bodies, running up to the dais. With a look of incredulity on her face, Katrina turned to Alya, who smiled back at her, her face glowing like that of a lynx, and giving Katrina no clue as to how she should react.
And, really, there was only one way to react, Katrina thought, as she watched, fascinated, when the naked women joined the male dancers. And that was to enjoy it. After all, Katrina thought, she had seen naked dancing troupes before, and this was the same thing, really, despite the ridiculous costumes she and Alya were wearing.
But it wasn't quite the same as Katrina had expected, when she had felt her sophisticated presence returning. For there was more to this display than dancing. Much more, Katrina realized, as she took in the spectacle unfolding before her. For the dancers were going through some sort of ritually choreographed metaphor for the sexual act the men and women approaching one another, caressing each other's bodies and seeming to join together in any one of a hundred variations of the pursuit that Katrina herself had shown such versatility at.
Suddenly, Katrina began to grow alarmed. For something was happening to her body. True, she was being aroused by the sight of the flashing brown bodies, miming different erotic gestures and postures; but, down deep in the center of her being, she was aware of a sort of burning a pulsing of desire that caught her up and shook her every now and then in the desperate clutch of lust. Without realizing it, she had started squirming in her chair, sliding her buttocks back and forth on the robe and sliding down on the chair, to bring herself into closer contact with the edge of the seat.
Although she had just finished drinking the last drops from the goblet, her throat was suddenly parched. And yet, at the same time, the sweat was pouring off her as her muscles involuntarily flexed and shook. Then she nearly jumped out of her skin.
For one of the men had come forward and, bending down before her, had kissed her foot. She saw that another of the dancers, who themselves seemed to be in the throes of mindless desire, was doing the same to Alya. With her emotions battling her instincts, Katrina was paralyzed as the man moved up her lower leg, brushing her skin with soft, nibbling lips. Katrina clenched her hands on the chair, her back stiffening, as he moved higher. Her mind cried no, and screamed at her to run from the room. But her body, fed and goaded by the music and sensual pageant, forced her to submit.
He moved higher and higher, past her knees, turning his head and implanting kisses alternately on each one of her thighs. She tried to lock her legs together, but her body betrayed her, the strange, desperate spasms in her forcing her to open herself. Out of the corner of her wildly rolling eyes, she saw Alya slide out of her chair, disappearing beneath a male body.
She felt all alone, clinging to the chair as her body responded to the unbearable, slow kisses. From somewhere came the blinding light of the spot again, making her feel like her skin was being stripped from her convulsed frame. There were other faces and hands close by now. Katrina bit her lip in agony as different hands came out of the darkness to rub one of her breasts or stroke her legs.
With rising hysteria, she scuffled her feet, madly trying to gain some footing. And found some, scrambling back up into the chair and half-crouching, half-standing on it. Her fists went to her temples, and her head rocked back and forth as she felt one, then two mouths close on her again, slithering nearer and nearer to the point where her body seemed to be boiling with fatal intensity.
And then one tongue found her. And giving a cry, she toppled forward, falling into the arms and hands of several who were ready for her, who guided her to the spot lit circle on the floor and helped restrain her as she fought to pull a body, any body, toward her own seething flesh; and her mind left her as she yielded herself up to the lights and sounds and the parade of flesh which seemed to last for eternities, but only gradually managed to abate the unnatural, ferocious hunger she felt, coaxing her one by one, back from her wanton state to gradually enforced consciousness.
* * *
Clint spent the night working writing a monologue to Katrina in which he explained his entire situation, from the plane crash that killed his parents up to the preceding night when Katrina had walked in on the scene in his bedroom. When he finished, he felt vastly relieved and almost whistled as he sauntered down to the lobby to leave the long transcript of confession and apology with the desk clerk.
For Katrina, when she had read it, it was very nearly the straw that broke the camel's back. For all that morning, she had felt completely lost, ever since Alya had come to her room with Mr. Boulo after breakfast.
Her memory of the night before had been dim, all right. But not to the extent that she couldn't recognize herself in the pictures. They showed her pictures she could scarcely believe even when they forced her to study them. Nor was it any easier to believe the machinations that Boulo had explained to her as to how the pictures would be sent to her last few friends and relatives, the addresses of whom Boulo showed her with smug confidence. It was fantastic, she thought, staggering around her room after they had left: both the behavior she had been trapped into the night before and the use these people were making of it to bribe five thousand dollars out of her five thousand dollars which would be added to the "Others" section of her tour contract.
On top of all that, and Katrina's acceptance of the fact that she had been thoroughly taken, Clint's letter was heartbreaking. She realized now that she had been completely right in her initial estimate of his honesty. And now that he had come clean and even in her state of shock she could realize how much courage it must have taken to tell the whole story of his nymphomanic sister the burden of guilt was on her. In the conclusion to his letter, Clint had pleaded with her to meet him so they could straighten things out and make it up. But after last night, Katrina thought, feeling another wave of revulsion sweep through her as she thought of the pictures Boulo had shown her pictures that a sailor might blanch at after last night, it was either fight or run; one way or another she would have to obliterate the evidence of her mistake before she could face Clint again. She dared not attempt to enlist his help or his sympathy. Because his letter had convinced her that he was possessed of exactly the quality that last night's horror show told her she didn't have a stable element of moral strength. God, how she wanted to go tell him! But it was too great a risk suppose she should lose him when he had been told of it! There was only one thing to do, she thought, since she could degrade herself no more on purpose than she had done inadvertently last night. And so Katrina laid her plans, according to her own capabilities, with a design toward her own kind of redemption.
CHAPTER SIX
Clint was heading back up to his room after spending the morning in a fruitless search for Katrina. She seemed to have disappeared into thin air, he thought, which was absurd, considering that she hadn't checked out of the hotel, and, even if she had, there was no place else on San Dozes she could go, as far as he knew. He wondered how she would react to his formal explanation and apology, hoping in his heart that she would respond to its frankness and sincerity. Probably, she was still mad and had gone off to brood somewhere letting him cool his heels. That was okay, he thought; he deserved to have to sweat it out for a while. But writing the letter had made him feel so good, coming clean with her, that he really didn't have doubts that they'd be together again before very long.
Maybe, he conjectured, walking down the hotel corridor, Katrina would be able to help him deal with Shirley. She was a capable and mature person, he figured, and that, along with a fresh mind, was what the problem of Shirley really demanded. For Clint had absolutely no bargaining power left with Shirley nothing he could threaten, cajole or bribe her with. She was just sinking farther into her personal abyss, he thought, trying every step of the way for some reason he had never figured out to drag him along with her.
As Clint turned the corner, his thoughts dwelling on his sister, Shirley suddenly slipped out of their suite into his view. He dodged back and, peering around the corner, saw her hustle down the other end of the hall toward the fire stairs. For a minute, he was tempted to call after her and ask her where the hell she was going now. But he swallowed his words and instead padded down the hall after her.
When he opened the fire door, he could hear her footsteps clattering down the iron stairwell. Letting her get some distance ahead of him, he proceeded after her. From the way she was hurrying along, in contrast to her usual casual pace not to mention the fact that she was using the back stairs Clint was sure she was up to something.
At the ground floor, as he followed her out the door, he noticed that they were near the kitchen, to the back of the hotel's large dining room. He peered 'round the doorway into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of her dress disappearing out a back door. Sneaking along the cooking tables, crouched low so that the huddle of cooks and their helpers at the other end of the kitchen wouldn't see him, he kept on her trail.
From the door he emerged in the kitchen courtyard, and then had to duck back in to avoid her catching sight of him. For she had stopped and looked back over her shoulder. Then, as he sneaked a peek at her, she grabbed an empty garbage can and rounded the corner of the hotel with it.
What the hell? he wondered. Had she really cracked up? Turned scavenger, maybe? There had to be some explanation. He rounded the corner and, at a discreet distance, followed her as she crashed through the thick vegetation that hugged the walls of the hotel. Then, as he watched, mystified, she repeated what had become a ritual, setting the garbage can upside-down and standing up on it to peer into a window.
His sister a peeping Tom? Clint wondered. Nothing was impossible, of course, but it wasn't quite her style.
Clint was startled by more noise in the brush coming from the direction of the courtyard. He melted back into the lush greenery as best he could, noting with interest the new party on the scene a young-looking native boy, who crept right past the place where he was standing in semi-camouflage.
Clint held his breath as the boy crept along until he had reached Shirley. He saw the youth tug at his sister's dress and then saw her response to his presence how her face lit up with the look of anticipation he had seen all too many times. She jumped off the garbage can and, as Clint watched with a sickened feeling, embraced the youth passionately. He hoped he wouldn't have to witness some more of his sister's debaucheries, and was relieved when she grabbed the youth by the hand and led him away into the undergrowth.
The thing that still puzzled Clint was what Shirley had been looking at through the window, which judging from her routine with the garbage can she was obviously familiar with.
When he was sure that the couple had fled the scene, going off to pursue God knows what varieties of mid-day lust, Clint crept up to the garbage can. With his old Marine stealth, he climbed up on it, carefully placing his feet on the rim so that the tin bottom would not buckle and give him away. Cautiously, he raised up and peered over the window-sill.
like his sister, he was peering into Boulo's office. Only Clint recognized the manager right away, having complained to him earlier in the week about his pestering staff members. And that's what seemed to be going on now, he thought. Some kind of daily staff meeting. He recognized most of the men and women who were standing around Boulo's desk as employees of the hotel. What he couldn't figure was what Shirley had been interested in.
His curiosity compelled him to stay at his vantage point longer than he otherwise would have. From what he could make out of the conversation, Boulo was discussing some kind of schedule with the staff, passing folders full of papers back and forth to them. He tried to guess what it was all about personnel procedures, guest complaints but couldn't fit anything to the comments and actions he was witness to.
Then he started. Had that been his name, Clint Westwood, he had just heard? He located the speaker and recognized her as the woman who had followed him around, bugging him with stupid questions about how happy was he with the hotel and the island and his vacation. The very person he had in mind when he had complained to Boulo, in fact. He listened more carefully.
" ... I've tried everything I can think of," the girl was saying to the manager. "The guy's a dead show, that's all. The agency screwed up. He's not our mark."
Clint noticed Boulo's face crease with annoyance. And he heard the manager break in on the woman.
"So he's hard. Big deal. I've had him in here, because you rode all over him. But let me tell you he's not invulnerable. Alya here thinks maybe there's a connection between him and that Nadie woman. But whatever's going on, Alya managed to get the broad. You just play it a little less low-keyed. You'll get through to him. We'll extend his slot until after the weekend, so that gives you lots of time. Okay, no more questions? Good. Beat it, all of you."
Clint watched the men and women file out of the room, but his mind was working at a thousand miles a minute. What wasn't he invulnerable to? he wondered. And what were they interested in himself and Kat for? Or for that matter, any of the guests' personal affairs? And what had this girl Alya accomplished with respect to Kat? It all sounded more than peculiar. Clint was a past master at piecing together a picture from a few disjointed scraps of behavior. That's what journalism was all about. But he was sure as hell lost this time. And that made him more than usually interested in the fact that his name and Katrina's had been mentioned in whatever connection they were with this meeting Boulo had just adjourned.
He almost got so wrapped up in his reflections that he didn't hear the noise in the undergrowth. But at the crucial instant, he did notice it and, jumping off the can, faded back into the cover afforded by the lush vegetation. Well, he thought, here was Shirley again. No puzzles where she was concerned, he thought with sudden savagery, as he noted the disarray of her dress and hair in particular the green grass stains on her heels. Clint smiled to himself ironically as he thought of what must have become of the youth who had been dragged off by his predatory sister only moments before.
What a waste of life, he thought absently, watching Shirley look around and then clamber up to peek in the window again. A waste of a lovely girl intelligence, beauty and a body going down the rat hole. Clint backed off through the brush and left the scene, taking the long way out of the courtyard around to the hotel terrace. What was really occupying his thoughts was the puzzling scene he had witnessed; and since Katrina was still nowhere to be found, and Shirley, he assumed, was only up to her normal mischief, Clint settled down with a drink to theorize about possible explanations of the scene.
It was this reporter's instinct for becoming absorbed with incongruities that had won Clint his few honors in journalism. And there had been times when he had almost regretted how this instinct had distracted him from other things. If Clint had known at this moment that this was one time he should not have chosen to be distracted by such a loose end, something he would come to realize shortly, he would have stayed with his sister and watched more of her nutty behavior. As it was, she was the farthest thing from his mind.
And for Shirley, her brother, like most other things in the world, was the farthest thing from her mind. It had been a ball during the last few days, feeding off cheap rum and enjoying the furtive visits arranged by her scruffy host before her brother tracked her down. Left without anything to do, she had been reminded of the bizarre scene she had seen at Boulo's window earlier in the vacation. It was only the sheerest chance that she had caught her young lover's eye as she sneaked through the hotel kitchen. A nice sort of chance, she thought, as her body gradually stopped glowing from their recent torrid little session which had taken her away from her post. Now, stationed once again on the can, she knew she was having her cake and eating it too.
She hadn't lost anything by abandoning the window long enough to roll in the jungle growth with the young native. For the scene she remembered having seen was just beginning to unfold again as her eyes inched over the window sill. With variations, of course, but how much the nicer, she smiled to herself, squeezing her legs together in anticipation of the further excitement promised by the drama unfolding before her.
Alya had just seated herself in the hotel manager's lap, deliberately squirming around until she had worked her legs brazenly free of the boldly slit sheath. Shirley could hear her muttering into the fat man's ear, something about how well she'd done last night, bringing in a real chunk of money for the hotel from that one American girl, and didn't she deserve something extra for it?
Shirley felt a real identification with the dark-skinned girl who was trying to excite Boulo, using all the devices Shirley herself knew so well and loved to employ. From her vantage point at the shadow-protected window, Shirley leered as she watched Alya rocking back and forth on the man's lap, thrusting her beautiful legs out so that he couldn't help but notice and admire them, while at the same time, one of her hands swam under his shirt and tickled his adipose frame.
It was just the way Shirley loved to play with a man when the heat was on her, rubbing her breasts up against him the way the other was and teasing him around the ears with an adder-like tongue. She wasn't missing anything, Shirley noted with approval, but apparently there had to be some deliberate provocation according to the rules of their particular game. Just watching Alya made Shirley's body shiver with illicit interest and she found it hard to conceive how the man with this dark beauty in his lap could resist her teasing advances.
But all questions were answered when Alya, who had been distracting Boulo just enough with her playfulness, dug an ice cube out of the pitcher on his desk with her free hand. Shirley nodded vicarious encouragement as Alya's hand circled around Boulo and then slipped the ice cube down the back of his shirt.
With a roar of outrage, Boulo catapulted out of the chair, sending the guilty female rolling onto his desk. He bounded across his office, tearing his shirttails out of his pants. When that didn't solve his distress, he went into a madman's dance, trying to shake the offending ice out of his pants and down his leg. The sight was so comical between Boulo's antics and the expression of victory on the other girl's face that Shirley burst into laughter before she realized what she was doing.
Boulo stopped, virtually in mid-air, as if he'd been hit by a blowpipe. Then he raced to his desk, and before Shirley had even had time to react by clapping a hand over her mouth, Boulo was racing toward her with a pistol in his hand. There was only one way to deal with this, Shirley thought quickly, still laughing inside at how the man had been cavorting a few seconds before. As he came toward her, brandishing the pistol with a look of startled anger on his face, Shirley grabbed hold of the window-sill and lunged up into the window-frame itself.
Boulo stopped dead, as surprised by her emergence as the girl on his desk. But Shirley was feeling absolutely giddy with her own excited brand of sick humor and desire. She followed right on through, clambering through the window until she tumbled right into the office at Boulo's feet. She got right to her feet, intending to say something to cut the ice, as it were. Instead, taking her cue both from their confusion and her own impatience, she did something else.
Right in front of Boulo's widening eyes, as the pistol drooped in his hand, she unbuckled the cloth belt of her sundress and undid its buttons. Without hesitating for a second, she drew it over her head and tossed it on the floor; since she had lost her panties in the scuffle with the young boy only moments before, this left her standing dressed only in her bra and her mane of golden hair, which she shook in Boulo's face, taunting him all the more.
"Well," she announced, taking control with her usual dauntless willfulness. "What'll it be today, friends? A beating, a whipping anything you want to do'll be more fun with three. I can guarantee it!"
Shirley didn't realize it, but the expressions of amazement that Boulo and the girl shared were more the result of what they actually did share, rather than the surprise of her appearance and actions. And what they shared, of course, was not only the same sordid profession, but also a feeling of incredulity that anybody might have witnessed them at their mischief in the same way that they made a business out of witnessing the mischief they trapped the hotel's guests into.
"Well, c'mon!" she said. "You going to just stand there and stare at me. We're all wasting time. I'm just dying to take part in your games."
Boulo suddenly snapped out of his trance and went over to the window. When he had looked out and seen the garbage can and then looked back at Shirley and recognized her, the look of mystification on his face vanished. He managed at the same time to signal Alya that Shirley didn't represent the threat they had suspected.
He regained his composure and casually re-crossed the office, sliding the gun back into his desk drawer. "Well, now, yourself, Miss ... ah..."
"Just call me Shirley!" she offered brightly, grinning crookedly at him. "I think all playmates ought to be on a first-name basis."
"That's nice, Shirley," he answered. "Shirley, this is Alya. Tell me, what kind of play did you have in mind?"
"Oh, I'm sure anything you suggest will be fine," she teased back.
"Boo," complained Alya, suddenly growing petulant. Shirley looked at the other girl, who was moving about restlessly on the desk, obviously consumed with her own ideas of pleasure and growing impatient now that the interruption was losing its novelty. "C'mon, Boo, it's been two days now."
"Easy, baby," he said. "You whine too much. You may not get it at all today. Unless, of course," he said, looking back at Shirley, who was standing dressed only in her bra, hands on her hips, "our guest might want to oblige you."
Alya looked at Shirley with new interest, at the same time squirming a little more coyly and running her tongue across her lips as she studied Shirley's own commanding charms and sized up her capabilities. "Would you?" she asked.
"Would I what?" laughed Shirley. "There's nothing I haven't been known to try."
"This," interjected Boulo, pulling the leather strap
Shirley had seen before from his desk. He walked over, flexing the thick leather in his pudgy hands and then handed it abruptly to Shirley, simultaneously pointing to Alya. "My friend has a remarkable taste for chastisement. Think you can manage?"
Shirley studied the strap, then hefted it in her hand, putting her fingers through the small loop at one end that formed a grip. "No problem," she said. "Is your friend ready?" she asked. But one more look at Alya told her the question was superfluous. For the darker girl had already slid off the desk and was pulling her dress from her body.
Shirley felt her heart bounce as the other exposed herself. Usually she was not so partial to women's bodies, but this was a special package. The lithe, muscular frame with its compact but specially molded endowments. Shirley could read the desire in the other's eyes like an open book and felt the muscles of her tummy contract involuntarily with a flicker of sadistic lust.
She raised her arm and tested the weight of the strap, snapping it in the air, watching with pleasure how the nude figure confronting her twitched at the sight of the leather in motion. Then she took a menacing step forward, as Alya retreated in semi-hypnotic reaction. Shirley was pretty sure she knew what Boulo liked, and she was even more certain that she knew how to embellish it for him.
"Grab your ankles," she barked at the other, who obediently bent forward and did just that. Out of the corner of her eye, Shirley noted Boulo's new interest as the doubled-over body automatically revealed some of its more absorbing features. A real nut, Shirley thought gaily to herself. This was going to be lots more fun than her usual escapades with more normal and strait-laced strangers.
Aware that a good show always needs continuity, Shirley edged closer to the bent-over figure, aroused herself by the employee's sacrificial posture. She dangled the leather strap near the girl's buttocks and then teased it over the girl's upraised rear end and the taut backs of her thighs. Boulo swallowed hard and unbuttoned his shirt in anticipation of coming events.
Shirley worked both of them up a little more, teasing and trailing the strap over the girl's shivering form. Then, without warning, she stepped back and at the same instant whirled her arm over her head, sending the leather down with a brutal blow on the girl's naked, rounded flesh.
The harshness of the lash drove a squeal from the target of her spirited abuse, while Boulo settled back against his desk, clasping his fingers over his rotund belly in relaxed satisfaction. Shirley delivered another blow, this time across the back of the girl's legs, causing her to stumble forward on her hands for a couple of feet.
"Hold onto those ankles," she sang out, warming to the job and bringing the strap down diagonally from the other side of her head, like a professional bullwhip artist. Again and again she crisscrossed the punishing leather across the soft, resilient flesh, filling the luxurious office with the sound of hard smacks, whimpering cries and her own and Boulo's hard breathing.
Where the blows were landing, Alya's burnished skin turned a dull, dark red. And with every strike that Shirley delivered, her arm flashing down harder and harder as she became intoxicated with the perverse satisfaction of her role, Alya became more and more unsteady. Now she was virtually dancing on her hands and feet under the lashing that rained down on her. Her ribs rippled under her skin as she fought for breath in between her delirious cries of pleasure, and her brown pointed breasts swung crazily from her tormented, unnaturally positioned body.
Boulo was joining his lover in sound now, urging Shirley to hit the girl harder and becoming more restless as the girl's pain visibly increased. He beat his little ham-like fists on his desk in accompaniment to the smacking sounds the strap made as it bit into the sensitive skin, and he started doing a little ecstatic jig of his own in time to Shirley's impetuous flailing.
Shirley herself felt her throat thicken with the headiness of passion as she beat on, each stroke more vehement and searching than the last. She broke her stride only long enough to free herself of her bra, her last article of clothing, adding the completeness of herself to Boulo's visual feast. The pounding of her heart was sending insistent messages to the whole of her body, messages of quickening lust that inflamed her vital areas. Her arm ached and she knew she could not last much longer without herself receiving some physical relief. She hoped Boulo would initiate something. But when she realized that he was completely absorbed in what she was doing, she became desperate.
At last she flung the strap directly at him, unable to resist the clamor in her own flesh any more, incited as she was by her exertions and the portrait of Alya's self-seeking misery. Her nostrils flaring with a heightened fury, she flung her naked body onto the other girl, toppling them both to the floor.
Instantly, Alya reacted to the delicious contact of their two sweating forms by grappling with her, pulling Shirley into a crazed, writhing embrace of lust. Boulo danced with glee as the two women rolled on the floor, responding to each other with all the passion of a normal couple going out of their minds with passion. He seized the strap from where Shirley had abandoned it and himself began lashing out at the female form with two backs.
His blows caused spasms of delight and delirious pain in both women. When his first vicious blow caught
Shirley half across one of her throbbing breasts, she reacted by sinking her teeth into one of Alya's swollen mounds of pleasure. Never had she experienced such bizarre stimulation, Shirley thought, as she rolled with Alya in what was actually a pitched battle between two bitches in heat.
Boulo circled about them, kicking at their soft, shining bodies and employing the strap whenever he saw a particularly choice opening. But his blows came from a distant world to the women, who were locked in their own world of savage kisses and nipping teeth, their hands at once mauling each other's delicate flesh and spurring each other to greater ecstasy.
Boulo, for all that he was removed from the direct center of the storm, was practically beside himself with delight. Not for years had his head rung dizzily with the sick sense of chaos that it did now, as the two women roiled about on the floor. He wanted them to degrade themselves even more than they were, and they soon complied.
Neither Shirley nor Alya had ever been in the arms of a woman before, but this didn't prevent either from following a mutually twisted instinct. Boulo bit his fingers in excitement as the white and brown figures wrestled with what seemed to be mindless fury, but was actually deliberate maneuvering. And then Shirley and Alya had achieved what they wanted having gotten themselves locked to each other's beaten, boiling bodies, but facing in opposite directions. Each woman flung her legs open to the other and locked them shut again, presenting to Boulo the extraordinary spectacle of consummated lesbian love laboring to greedy fulfillment under the umbrella of his wildly-inflicted torture.
This was the sort of pleasure Shirley had been seeking all these years, she thought, as her body seemed to cleave apart under Alya's tempestuous, searching kisses. And she drove herself to repay her new lover in kind, seeking with ravaging mouth the lush secrets of her mirror image.
As the two women became completely absorbed and muffled in one another, Boulo's exhaustion and pleasure reached a new pinnacle. At last he was forced to toss away the strap and, flinging himself on his couch, oblivious to the passionate embrace of the double-backed beast on his carpet, finished out the reality of his boyish fantasies by retiring to the world of boyish pleasure, seeking with his own hands to relieve his jaded tensions.
On the other side of the soundproof door, Boulo's secretary looked at her watch in astonishment and closed up her desk for the afternoon. Never had the two of them taken this long, she thought. At this rate, there'd be nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon, and she was going to get a little sun as long as everybody else on the payroll was going to hell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Katrina saw Clint sitting on the terrace, buried in his own thoughts, and was careful not to let him see her as she sneaked back into the hotel. After a day of walking and thinking, she had made a decision. And now, settling back in the quiet of her hotel room, she reviewed that decision.
Basically, she had no way out. She could not call the hotel's bluff, because there were certain people, who, if they ever saw some of those revolting pictures Boulo had someone make at that so-called "ceremony," could ruin her forever in the States. One made enemies in Hollywood, no matter what one did, and Katrina had made her share. So even if she could count on her close friends not to react to them, she knew there were people who would love to get their hands on them. The amazing thing was that Boulo had their addresses, how, Katrina had no idea.
And, of course, the five thousand dollars they were blackmailing her for was of no real consequence. She could have that in the morning mail, if she wanted it, no problem. That was one thing she had gotten out of her disaster of a marriage some security against the next few years of probable independence and changes of plans.
When you came right down to it, Katrina had decided, she was simply not going to let these mafia-types extort the money from her. She had made a mistake, let her guard down for once, and they had gotten her, but good. She had sunk so low, she figured, there was nowhere to go but up. So why not stay down in the mire a little longer, long enough to worm her way into the operation that produced these little schemes and get her hands on the negatives of those pictures. Fight fire with fire, she thought, and filth with filth. She had done it before. She could do it again. All it took was a strong stomach. And anyone who could look at even pictures of what she had done that night with those "dancers" and not gag outright, had a strong stomach, she figured. That's what it took to survive a fierce body blow. She would see now if they could take the same thing in reverse. But it would take some fast work. Time was not on her side. Clint would probably not be staying much longer, and when he left, she damn sure wanted to be going with him, in clear conscience and with a renewed sense of the trust they had been building.
Clint skipped dinner at the hotel that night. His vacation was over, he had decided, until he got some word from Katrina. The bug of curiosity had bitten him, and suddenly he wanted to know what San Dozes was really like, and how it fitted into the world at large.
He started where a reporter often starts in the cheaper taverns along that part of the waterfront where the beaches stopped and the loading piers started. It took him three and a half hours and any number of abominable drinks, but he found what he was looking for: someone he knew told the truth when he talked.
It didn't matter really what he talked about, as long as he could establish one contact with a reliable human being, but Clint's luck in this respect was running right, and he got more in Cheyenne than he had bargained on finding.
Cheyenne ran a seafood snack-shop for a largely native trade. But at the half-closed-in end of his shack, he had an old bamboo bar with three heavily padded stools. He had bought the whole thing at an auction held by a bankrupt movie lot back in the thirties. Clint smiled at the humor of it. A Caribbean islander working for fifteen years as an Indian heavy in silent pictures and the early talkies; pulling up stakes during the depression and buying an executive-type bar to bring back home with him and build a business around.
As ludicrous as the "bar" was, though, Cheyenne mixed good drinks California style, and talked straight talk. One of the things Clint was looking for was a telephone, for instance. And talking with Cheyenne convinced him that his hunch had been right that there was something peculiar in the fact that the only telephones on the island were in the hotel.
"Sure, you know, that's part of the set-up," Cheyenne assured him. "They got the whole island sewn up, and all the others too. When you got something sewn up, you don't go putting telephones all over the place. They got the phones, and they got people listening. Listen, I can't phone and find out how my MGM stock is doing that they don't know I'm calling. What you want a telephone for, anyway? The tourists here they're supposed to leave their worries behind when they come here."
"Save it," Clint smiled, appreciating Cheyenne's sarcasm. "I want to get word to a friend in the States to send me some stuff. A camera, a recorder there's something about this whole set-up that strikes me as being slightly odd, you know? I'd like to do a little documentary work."
"Say, that's not polite, on these islands," Cheyenne replied. "But if you want, I can take a message for you to be telegraphed. I have a friend who goes over to the Hilton on the other island every night takes the laundry. You give me the message. He can send for your things. He can bring them over. They'll never know."
"Who's the 'they'? " Clint asked, breaking his promise to himself not to ask Cheyenne outright.
"Ha! Hey, you really are a tourist, right? Do me a favor," he said, leaning on the bar and rolling a cigarette, "don't ask me who 'they' are. I tell you that they own the islands. I'll go farther and tell you that a crummy little sand-palace like this makes a good return on their investment just like it had gambling, you know, casinos the whole bit."
"That's what I was thinking," Clint mused. Then he dropped his defenses and told Cheyenne what he had seen and heard while eavesdropping outside Boulo's window that afternoon. "What do you make of that?" he asked the noble savage. "Something to do with each guest being assigned to a hotel staff member and a schedule of some sort. I can't figure it. They sure as hell weren't discussing who needed salt-free diets."
"That's the truth," said Cheyenne, scraping the label off a bottle of cheap gin and pasting an import brand name on.
"Look," he continued, "I like you, Westwood. It's been a long time since an intelligent American came to my bar and talked to me. But you're not a government man. I know that. So what does that make you? What do you want?"
"I don't know," Clint replied. "I'm a free-lance muckraker with a psychopath of a sister. It's her vacation. I've also got a broken heart at the moment. Big deal. It just suddenly hits me that this place can't make the money it takes to justify monopoly control off the kind of tourists I see here. So if there are no casinos and no whorehouses, where's the gimmick?"
"Now you're thinking," said Cheyenne. "I'll tell you something. That sister of yours. I know all about her. The guy who suckered her into that shack is a ass I threw out of here years ago. There's no one on this street down here who hasn't had a go at your sister in the last three days. I'm glad you know she's got a problem. If I were you, I'd give her a free rein again. The kind of thing she goes in for, she'll lead you sooner or later to the gimmick. You they won't fool with, when it comes to gimmicks. Whatever you are back in the States, 'they' know all about it. Believe me. You want to find out what's really going on here. Follow your sister. I'll see you later. The hootch is on the house."
"Thanks," Clint replied, scribbling on a piece of paper. "Here's the telegram. See you."
It was late when he got back to the hotel, but he found out from the desk clerk that Shirley hadn't been around all evening. Nor was she up in her room. His conversation with Cheyenne really hadn't given him much to go on, he thought, providing there was anywhere to go. But he'd lost a day's work, if Shirley didn't show, he thought, when he thought of Cheyenne's advice.
He kept thinking all night, in his sleep, with the result that he overslept and nearly missed Shirley the next morning. He woke just as her door slammed shut and heard her sandals go scuffling down the hall. Bounding out of bed, he slipped on a pair of slacks and a sport shirt and whipped out of his room. By running down the main stairs, he reached the lobby just as she came out of the elevator. Hanging back so she wouldn't see him, Clint watched her cross the lobby and head for the hotel office. There was only one person she'd be going to see, he thought.
He shot through the dining room and slipped through the kitchen, making the mistake of forgetting that the staff were still busily at work. He got some odd looks as he threaded his way through the hot pantry and escaped to the courtyard. But no one checked him or followed him. Making sure he hadn't been spotted, Clint did exactly what Shirley had done the day before grabbed an empty garbage can and lugged it around the corner of the building with him.
Arriving at Boulo's window, he positioned the can and clambered up on it. Not daring to peek into the office, he listened with all the concentration of a leatherneck on a sniper patrol and was rewarded by snatches of conversation between that fat bastard of a manager and his sister.
" ... so glad we're all so compatible," he heard Shirley say. "Now where is it that tonight you want me..."
Some words Clint couldn't discern, then Boulo's voice: "Just show the driver that address any taxi'll know. We'll be looking forward to seeing you."
"Oh, I'm the one who'll be looking forward to it," he heard Shirley say, and that apparently was the end of it.
Clint cleared out of the hiding-place and retraced his steps back to the lobby. But Shirley was nowhere to be found. Not on the terrace; no one had seen her head for the beach or upstairs. Damn! he thought; he had to know where she was going tonight. And the only way to find out was to find her, sometime in the course of the day.
Katrina had gotten a much earlier start on the day. She had planned the first stage of her attack and had spent the morning looking for the young woman who had betrayed her and gotten her into this fix. It was about mid-day that she came across Alya by the hotel's overheated outdoor pool where only the laziest and most modest of the hotel's introverted guests spent their time.
Alya was sunning herself, wearing a bikini which, Katrina figured, made her own look Victorian. The top half resembled a bandana that had been folded to make a blindfold, and just barely, it seemed, concealed the crucial extremities of the girl's pointed breasts. The bottom half made no attempt to do anything other than prevent sunburn to the most delicate part of the female body. Pretty odd, thought Katrina, considering the other's naturally dark complexion. She drew up a chair quietly next to where Alya was lying.
"Why, Miss Nadie," exclaimed Alya, raising her head at the sound of the chair scraping on the concrete. "What a pleasure to see you. I hope you enjoyed our little foray the other night. Where there are regrets, there's no fun, you know." She lay back and closed her eyes.
Bitch! Katrina thought. She felt like putting her cigarette out on the tender area between the girl's nearly naked breasts. But she had planned things too deliberately to let herself be annoyed by the other's gratuitous taunts.
"As a matter-of-fact," she replied evenly, "that's just what I'd like to talk to you about."
"Oh, you know, I'm sorry," replied the girl without moving or opening her eyes. "But any conversation on that subject should be taken up with the manager. He'll be happy to discuss it."
Katrina felt her hatred building for this smug creature, but swallowed it and went on.
"I don't think you understand," she said. "I was amazed at the whole thing, but I don't want to rehash any of that particular evening. The truth of it is, that after thinking about it, I find I've never enjoyed myself so much, if you know what I mean," she paused.
Alya opened one eye half-way at this last comment and its deliberate ambiguity. Katrina went on as if she hadn't noticed.
"I didn't want to admit it at first, but it's precisely the sort of thing I guess I secretly wanted to discover when I decided to come to the Caribbean. The why's and wherefores aren't important. Neither is the fact that, while I was learning all sorts of things about myself the other night, I wouldn't particularly care to repeat that sort of experience again in that context, I mean.
"What I'm really getting at is that you're obviously a person who knows where the action is on the island. And I'm finding that I really want to be part of the action. Not quite that sort, but on a level, say, that's more consistent with the atmosphere and types of people I'm used to. Do you follow me?" she asked Alya.
"Continue," said the other, making no move to appear interested or otherwise in Katrina's comments.
"Well, to put it as bluntly as I can as one woman to another interested in much the same sort of, ah, liberties I've often found it difficult to reconcile what I look for in sex with what's offered me. Now the other night appealed to me because I enjoyed it so much. But what I'm wondering is if there wasn't some other environment some other social setting, in which the same sort of thing goes on, in which I might feel a bit more at home than I did with those dancers."
"But you say you enjoyed them and their ideas of recreation," ventured the sunbathing girl.
"Indeed I did," replied Katrina. "But look, I feel I can pick my friends, so to speak. Money and time are of no concern to me, as you probably know..." That registered, thought Katrina, noticing the inadvertent motion of the eyebrow in the other and hoping that the comment had produced the desired effect. " ... I've got plenty of both. In essence, I'm looking for a more stimulating crowd than your dancer-friends. And I thought you might be just the person who'd know if there were people around who'd be interested in me."
"You sound as if you're putting yourself on the market," observed the other with a wry smile.
"Well, after all," observed Katrina as nonchalantly as she could, rising from her chair, "it is an unusual market we're talking about. And the buyers in such a market would probably be people I'd be willing to sell to without haggling over prices. I wish you'd give it some thought and let me know. Good morning."
Katrina strolled away, only slightly nervous about how her pitch had gone over. When it came down to it, she thought, it was tougher to sell yourself as a whore than as anything else. But she had the feeling that she'd put her notice of sale in the right hands. Now to try and find the patience to wait for a bid!
* * *
Clint was beginning to feel like a boy scout, after tracking his sister around for half the afternoon. He had finally come across Shirley but had no opportunity to find out where she was headed that night. Now he had followed her up to her room. And the minute she had gone into the head, he had slipped in and grabbed her purse. Without hesitation, his hand shot to the bottom of the handbag, to the hinged flap he knew lay at the bottom of the lipsticks and assorted junk where Shirley usually hid her dope. He found it and "felt around until his fingers discovered a slip of paper. Quickly he dug it out and read the initials scrawled in pencil: VH. He replaced it and ducked out of the room just as the toilet began flushing and Shirley emerged.
"Come in," she called, hearing a knock on the door. "Why, brother baby, how nice to see you. Where have you been all this time holding off all comers at a ping-pong tournament?"
"Very funny," Clint replied. "Since we seem to have been avoiding each other for so long, why don't we dine together at a late hour?"
"Oh, brother baby, I'd love to," cooed Shirley, "but I've got a date at eight-thirty. Some other night."
"Suits me," Clint shrugged, walking back out of the room into his own. Eight-thirty, he thought. Well, that gave him a little time to poke around for Katrina.
But Katrina wasn't to be found for the poking. The message she had given to Alya that morning had been borne by the girl to interested parties, and Alya had been instructed to find out just how serious Katrina Nadie was whether she was trying to make trouble regarding the blackmail racket or was "sincerely" interested in more of the behavior she'd been introduced to. It was Alya's not unpleasant task to perform the trial experiment on this American woman who intimated that money and time were merely obstacles to her pursuit of pleasure.
She had found Katrina resting up in her room. Alya's plan was simple and would not only tell her how serious the American beauty was about her confession of readiness, but would also contribute to Alya's new found diversion. When Katrina called, "Come in," Alya strode right into the room.
"I think I've found the people you're looking for," she announced, "but they wanted me to test your willingness under completely voluntary circumstances."
"Fine," said Katrina, preparing herself for whatever was to come. As it happened, her preparations were very nearly not enough. For Alya, wearing a lascivious, mocking grin, had kicked off her sandals, pulled off her sheath, and flopped onto Katrina's bed.
"Okay, gringo," she purred, "come, make love to me."
Katrina started. Just like that, she thought, but kept the words from passing her lips. Well, there was no point in wasting any time. She edged over to the bed, saying a silent prayer, hoping that what she was about to do and whatever followed would redeem her in Clint's eyes.
As her eyes traveled the length of Alya's waiting, outstretched figure, Katrina's memory was jogged to a day in Hollywood when at a large party she had walked into a bedroom and accidentally interrupted a little passion play between two sideline starlets. She remembered how the instinctive revulsion she had felt at the sight of two female bodies clutching one another had been allayed by a queer jolt of interest before she stumbled back out the door.
And now, looking at Alya, Katrina's mind flipped through both these reactions again: the alienated reaction of disgust at the prospect of making love to a woman upon a cold-blooded command and the involuntary feeling of temptation she derived from the spectacle of Alya's charms brazenly displayed on her bed.
The acid test, she thought. For a second she felt uneasy when she considered that she was a mere virgin when it came to lesbian love, but she quickly reminded herself that the performance was obviously going to be judged on intention, and not style.
Katrina stepped out of her own clothes, turning to one side with a twinge of modesty as Alya rolled on her side and greedily stared at her. "Oh, I like you," breathed the girl on the bed. "This will be so nice, yes?"
"Yes," Katrina forced herself to say, coming toward the other in her underclothes.
"Off, take everything off!" Alya commanded, waving her hand in a silly, schoolgirl gesture. Katrina bit her lip and removed her bra and panties. It was so degrading, she tried to remind herself. But at the same time, she felt a perverse pride at the way the other's eyes widened when she uncovered her magnificent breasts. They stood forward on her chest like great dirigibles tethered in a strong headwind, thrusting out their ruby tips with indescribable impertinence.
Now it was Alya's turn to blow her cool. She had planned to have the American girl make love to her, debasing her completely. But she found herself gripped by a compulsion to caress this sumptuous tan body that hovered near her, standing in two-toned naked glory.
"Come," Alya said hoarsely, unable to take her eyes off the other. Katrina moved awkwardly to the bed, raising one knee and half-kneeling next to the darker girl. She herself was sliding into a new mood, inspired by the closeness of their two beautiful bodies. She glanced across the room and caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror caught sight of her high, thrusting breasts and curving figure poised near the reclining form of the islander.
Then Katrina gasped and looked back, half in alarm, as Alya's fingers lighted on her leg. She looked down and saw the brown hand glide up her thigh, and her body jerked as the caress triggered certain sensitive nerves. She hovered there as Alya continued to stroke her, setting her thighs to a prickling uneasiness. Her buttocks tightened and she felt a cramp in her back as the caresses went on. But she couldn't move. Instead she was paralyzed by the touch of this woman upon her body, this touch which quickly moved from a playful level to a deadly intimate one.
"Unnhh," Katrina heard herself gasp when Alya's fingers probed her secret place with merciless accuracy. Unable to move, Katrina turned the top half of her body first one way, then the other, writhing above the goading fingers.
"Ohhh, oh no!" she ejaculated, as Alya's fingers sought her more deeply, triggering off the most unbearable of fleshly contacts. Katrina shut her eyes and moaned in her throat. Her weight leaned against the bed and she was forced to swing her other knee onto it. Then she knelt erect, feebly trying to move herself away from the eager fondling of the other.
In desperation, unable to bring herself to make contact with her torturer, yet unable to withstand the stimulation that was setting her entire body on fire, Katrina moaned again. Her hands jerked uncertainly and then went to her own breasts, squashing them against her in an attempt to still the fires that had started there.
Alya's eyes were shining now, and her lips were gleaming in a wet, Machiavellian smile. What she'd done yesterday with the other American in Boulo's office had been fun. But this was much better, seducing another woman from scratch, turning her from a dignified, mature human being into a moaning, wracked captive of lust.
Alya pushed Katrina so that she fell back onto the bed. She hunched herself like a tigress ready for the kill, devouring the sight of the golden body that pressed its thighs together on her arm and covered its breasts with its own hands.
Lunging. forward, Alya pried Katrina's buttery thighs apart and squirmed in between them. Katrina went into a convulsion as Alya's body made contact with the insides of her legs and her stomach. But Alya pressed on, sliding her own bronze skin over the other's tawny form. She took Katrina's hands away, holding her by the wrists. And with a leer that encompassed her entire face, lowered herself with her own compact, sharply-profiled breasts to the other's lush, swelling body.
"Oh, I can't stand it," Katrina groaned, gurgling with what almost seemed to be hysteria as she felt the darker girl's body press and churn against her own felt the small, hard nipples stub themselves against her own rapidly swelling buds, and felt the ineffable ecstasy of another woman's hidden fire joined to her own.
With a sudden display of abandon, she threw her arms around her new lover, crushing her to her burning body. Her strong legs arched up and locked the slender hips to her own. Her spine curved and her sides rippled as she roiled her charms against the other's. With a new spirit of unleashed rapacity, all images of right fading into darkness, she blindly sought the other's mouth with her own.
Then they were completely together, surging and gyrating as one, their sweating forms mashing each other. Each was straining under the burden of mutual frustrations which each had formerly known how to appease only in coupling with a male body. Spurred on by their heightened need, each broke her hold on the other.
On a mutual cue, they scrambled about the bed, coming together again in the only position that could afford equal relief to both. Katrina her brain benumbed by the catalytic impact of the experience she was just entering into sought Alya's body with the sure instinct Alya herself had displayed with Shirley on Boulo's office floor.
Then a bolt of lightning jagged through her body as Alya's mouth found her. And even as she felt herself reacting, she knew she had unleashed the same response in the other when Alya turned with a throaty scream and rolled them both over in a spasmodic reflex to Katrina's love-making.
The last thing Katrina knew was that she had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror her shining skin almost indistinguishable from Alya's; her hair tumbling over the other's thighs, her own face a contorted mask of lust. Then she was melting to Alya, welding herself to the other's body with passion, and Alya to her, convulsed with a fiery sense of satisfaction from the pleasure she was receiving and giving, finally dissolving under the intensity of their perverse rite, until she fainted away with sated mind and saturated body.
* * *
Clint sat at Cheyenne's bar, listening to the islander's explanation of the initials he had seen on the piece of paper in Shirley's purse.
"VH; look, there is a system here on San Dozes, for the other half of the island. The half we're on you have a hotel, the native town, and like that. So, over on the other half, you got all private land. Big villas. See, that's what the V stands for. All of them got different names. The H means Hibiscus. Villa de las Hibiscas, no? It is all very Yankee.
"The biggest villa is known in the system as VO Villa de los Orquideas but you will never get in there."
"No?" Clint queried him.
"No well maybe in, but not out alive; that is where the syndicate is for half the Caribbean headquarters. That is why San Dozes is such a modest operation, on the surface. However, you pay a taxi well and he will take you to this villa your sister is at. But if you want to wait a couple of hours, there is a package coming for you from the next island."
"A package. Not the stuff I cabled for?" Clint asked, surprised.
"Si," answered Cheyenne. "You must have good friends. They send you your things by air express, all in 24 hours. My man is bringing it over."
Clint decided to wait for the package, although it didn't come for an hour and a half longer than Cheyenne expected. It was nearly midnight when a boat tied up to the other side of the waterfront bar. But it took only minutes for Clint to check and load his several cameras. He took the miniature and his pocket recorder, leaving the rest with Cheyenne, and hailed a cab.
The wait was a mistake in a way. Not only had the ride cost Clint an exorbitant amount, but it appeared from the looks of things that he had missed the party. Clint wasted no time after finding the door to the courtyard locked. He went over the wall and crept along the tiled court until he came to the main building. There were lights on, but he heard no sounds. He checked the camera, holding it up under his cuff, and proceeded from archway to archway, looking cautiously into the elegantly furnished rooms of the villa.
Then he came to an open door and slipped inside. Shirley was probably long gone, he thought, sorry that he had waited for his gear. He looked cautiously around the large room he was in. Incredible, he thought, noting the array of spotlights and semi-professional stage equipment that hung from the ceiling and balconied walls. But what was more incredible was the sight at the far end of the room, where the floor was raised to a higher level. Judging from the columns and other props that were displayed on the dais, Clint could only surmise that some private theatre group had been staging their own version of the Fall of Rome.
Clint walked up the room, marveling at the plaster and gilt reconstructions of mythological symbols that stood about. At the very rear of the dais there was a handsomely ornamented curtain covering some sort of portal. That would be the focus of attention of this wacky set, he thought, and pulled the curtain aside. He had not been wrong in his guess.
His hand went to his stomach as he felt a wave of sickness wash over him. With horror and nausea, he staggered back from the portal that so much resembled a reconstructed example of a pagan example. Clint had covered a lot of grisly things as a journalist, but this was one time that he stood paralyzed before he could bring himself to take pictures.
Pictures of his own sister, Shirley, as she hung by her hands, twirling gently from a rope. Hung in bloody gore and ornamentation. The top half of her was still intact painted with bright colors, her breasts encircled by Cleopatralike metal spirals of faked gold. But the bottom half of her Clint felt the nausea shoot through him again as he focused on the sight through the miniature camera's precise lens.
The bottom half of her virtually no longer existed. Nothing but torn and bloody flesh that still oozed gore onto the one thing Clint knew wasn't made of papier-m�ch' the great, cruel phallic symbol she had been impaled on, and died on. Clint stood, snapping pictures of his sister's grisly, butchered remains until he could no longer stand it, and fled into the night, away from the Villa of Hibiscuses.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Katrina had passed her initiation with flying colors. So much so, in fact, that the initiation had lasted much longer than Alya had really planned. But in due time, the two women had regained control of their exhausted bodies, and Alya, having slipped on her sheath and brushed her hair, had left the room, leaving Katrina in a confused and sated stupor.
Had she remained that way, in her room, for the rest of the day and the night, she might have been spared what her initiation gave her credentials for. Because Clint would have found her when he staggered, ashen-faced, back into the hotel. As it was, he could not find her, and the desk clerk on the late shift could give him no indication where she had gone.
Which was reasonable enough. For Katrina had gone, by specific request, to that part of San Dozes no other visitors ever saw or knew existed.
Alya and Boulo had come for her quite late that night, at just about the time Clint was sneaking into the villa that held such a horrible surprise for him. And Katrina had willingly packed her bags, knowing that she had been accepted, and gone with them. After a long and bumpy ride through the night in Boulo's limousine, Katrina felt the car maneuver onto a paved surface. Then it was more darkness, in silence. And then lights, and some immense sort of guarded gate, where there was a keeper's cottage, of the sort Katrina usually associated with European country estates.
She pretended she was still dozing when a man came out of the cottage, accompanied by a large, mean-looking Doberman, and after talking with the driver, unlocked the great, wrought-iron gate and let them through. In the headlights of the car, as they drove up what Katrina presumed to be a twisting driveway, she could see glimpses of a lush garden. She was getting more and more uneasy, and at the same time, intrigued. She hadn't really known what she was asking for when she had laid her plans to get to the bottom of whoever it was that plotted the kind of set-up she'd been trapped in as an errant guest on the island. But it was clear that she had not underestimated the powers she was dealing with. From the looks of things, the innocent world of the Sandozes' Hotel and its surroundings was only a small part of what she had presumed was a small island. Now she was not so sure.
The car glided up to an immense house, a sort of melange, from what Katrina could see in the floodlights that shone out of the garden, of a San Simeon monstrosity blended with the weirdest examples of a Spanish Gothic country castle.
Without a word, she and Alya and Boulo got out of the car. The driver carried her bags to the door. Although Katrina didn't see him ring or knock, the door opened. Standing in it was a dapper little clerkish-looking man in an ordinary business suit. Boulo walked up to him and whispered a few words that Katrina couldn't overhear. Then he handed the man a thick packet of papers and returned to the car.
Katrina was surprised to see him climb into the automobile. And even more startled when Alya came up to her and gave her a quick hug and a kiss.
"This is what you were looking for. Have fun. Do not think I am joking when I tell you that prayer is often the only link to reality." Katrina stared at the girl in bewilderment.
"You are surprised? I live in no reality, you know. But I pray. Remember that. You will need to. Good-by." Alya gave Katrina a last kiss, a distinctly sisterly kiss, and climbed back into the limousine.
Katrina watched with disbelief as the car rolled silently away, back down the twisting carriage-way, and disappeared into the gardens. She turned around and saw that the small man had picked up her suitcases and was waiting for her patiently.
Without a word, she followed him through the door, into an enormous hall. Too much! Katrina thought, looking about her at the crazy magnificence of the place. She had heard of rich nuts who even in this day and age repeated the examples of the robber barons who had come before them in the New World building enormous monuments to their egos and fortunes at incredible costs. She had been in enough minor-league examples of this sort of thing back in Hollywood.
But this was something else. Not since she had taken the Duke of Bedford's prattling tour through his magnificent Woburn Abbey had she seen such opulence, on such a grand scale. She didn't know whether to be amused or impressed, as she followed the padding little man through the vast foyer and up the great central staircase. Her heels clacked on the polished marble as she ascended the curving stairs, her head rotating 360 degrees with every step taking in the paintings, the stuffed heads, the heraldic displays and banners. It was Hearst to the tenth power, she thought, flabbergasted.
It was only when she was sitting on her four-poster bed in what was apparently to be her room, and after the little man had padded out, locking the door, Katrina noticed, that she paused to reflect on what all this meant.
What precisely did it mean? she wondered. Only that she had been brought, at her own request, really, to a strange and unreal world. In the Caribbean? In the twentieth century? What was behind all this and the people who inhabited this place? she thought. Who exactly would she be joining? And in what sort of activity?
And would it, she wondered, feeling really apprehensive, have any bearing on the blackmail evidence the hotel had on her? What had she gotten herself into? No telling. A dream-world, it seemed. Katrina tried the door and realized it really was locked. She went to the window and pushed the heavy, velvet drapes aside to look out. And her blood ran cold in her veins.
For under the drapes, filling the entire casement of the enormous window, was a thick sheet-metal plate. The window was sealed in, she thought, backing away in dismay. The opulent room, whether by intention or not, was a jail-cell for all practical purposes. It was a long time, after Katrina had gone to bed between the satin sheets and downy blankets, before she was able to drift off to sleep. The last image in her conscious mind was a picture of Clint, standing on a beach, holding a letter out for her to take, a look of love and devotion inscribed on his face. And then the image faded, and Katrina slid into a nightmare, in which she was running through a castle, pursued by a horde of natives in dancing costumes, calling desperately for Clint.
Katrina had no idea what time it was when she awoke. The room was lit, dimly, by imitation gas jets in iron candelabra on the wall. It felt like late morning, but she couldn't be sure. She sat up in bed and re-focused her eyes. She smelled something. Food. And there it was on the table by her bed. An elaborate meal sitting under a delicate cut-glass globe on a silver tray.
Katrina figured it would be wise not to start asking herself questions this early in the morning. She washed up in the closet which had been converted to a small, modern lavatory and, getting back into bed, fell to the meal before her. It was lunch, she figured.
After she had eaten her fill of the delicious meal, she decided to get dressed, in anticipation of whatever the morning or afternoon would bring. But after looking everywhere, she realized that her luggage, which she had seen the little man bring in the night before, was nowhere to be found. Well that was a bit rude, she thought.
She walked around the room, looking for something to read, but there was nothing. Even more annoying, she thought, as long as she was being expected to wait in her nightgown, until someone appeared. She went back into the lavatory and absently picked up the hair brush that had been provided, with an intention of brushing her mane of rich black hair. But then she realized, with something of a shock, that there was no mirror in the lavatory. And none in the room itself no glass of any kind. It was a touch that didn't reassure her any.
Nothing to do but settle down and wait, which she did, brushing her hair for a long time and staring at an oil painting which hung on the wall opposite her bed. It depicted a group of English-looking huntsmen on horseback, with their hounds. But in the distance, instead of foxes, there were buxom, naked figures running at large over the landscape. Katrina studied it for a long time, until she finally fell back to sleep.
When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was that the tray had been changed and that another meal was awaiting her inspection. She ate, a little more uneasily than she had a few hours earlier. The prospect of someone sneaking into the room, along with everything else about the room, didn't please her.
If only she knew what time it was, she thought, at least she could make some sense of why no one might have shown up. But the dim lights shone on. The room was unchanged or was it? No. Something was different, she realized. Where the painting of the weird hunting scene had hung before, there was now a different picture. Katrina calmed her jittery nerves and studied the replacement. It seemed to be a parody of an 18th-century depiction of a classical court scene, complete with crumbling temple and a bacchanalian crowd of overstuffed, brilliantly clothed men and women. The thing that made it odd was that instead of the usual roast boar on the platter in the foreground, there was a female figure, trussed and garnished and lying on a silver tray with an apple in her mouth. Katrina shuddered at the pointed implication.
This wasn't so funny anymore, she reflected, as she went around her opulent apartment, searching for anything to alleviate her boredom. But she had no luck with wrestling with the stout door or prying at the iron-sealed window or searching for bric-a-brac or clothes in the few pieces of furniture. Nothing. Just a cell, really, she realized with a sinking feeling. God, how she wished someone would appear, someone to talk to, someone to let her out to see the light of day, or night whatever it was.
After hours of muddled thought and reminding herself that she couldn't afford to get upset, she dozed off again. When she awoke, there was no meal, and after lying in bed for a while, she fell back to sleep again. And then woke again, from a nightmare, in which Clint was being tortured in a medieval dungeon, dying with some secret on his lips that Katrina knew but did not know.
There was food again not discernible as any particular meal just food, delicious as it was. Katrina ate only some of it. She was determined to stay awake tonight, to find out who brought the food. But after hours and hours of sitting on her bed, walking around, singing to herself and brushing her hair, no one had come. And finally, the only thing she had left to do was take a shower.
When she emerged from the lavatory, toweling herself and wishing as only a woman can that she had a mirror, something else had happened. Not only had someone come and taken away the tray, but her nightgown, which she had left on the bed, had disappeared.
And not only that, but the bedding itself had been stripped from the down mattress. Katrina didn't know whether to go into a rage at the tricks someone was playing on her or sit down and cry with frustration. And then she realized as she sat on the plump, soft mattress, holding the damp towel to her body, that somehow, someone was spying on her. How else could they have known when to come and go? She looked absently around, and her eye fell on the picture, which, like the meals, had been changed.
This time she was compelled to go stand in front of it and study it closely. It was a portrait of a nicely furnished room an Edwardian room. Quite normal, except for one thing. In the elaborately decorated bird cage to one side of the picture there was no bird. But instead, the naked figure of a woman, crouching on a roost, staring out between the gilded bars of the cage. Katrina resisted the impulse to scream out.
As time dragged on, she fought that impulse more and more desperately. For she soon lost even the remotest sense of time. She slept; she woke. She ate; she washed. She sat and lay on the stripped-down bed, studying her nakedness and thinking about the eyes she knew were watching her from somewhere. She stopped being upset by the pictures, which changed with regularity but always stuck to the same theme themes she was familiar with from great paintings, but always with a naked woman or women substituting for something else in an incongruous way.
Above all, she knew, she had to keep control of herself. For perhaps, this confinement and humiliation were some sort of test. Or perhaps it was deliberately designed to unhinge her. She didn't really have any basic fear for her life. She was fed, and warm enough. And she simply sat, during her waking hours, thinking about her life: the compromises she'd made; the mistakes especially the greatest one her failure to trust Clint enough to be honest with him when he had been with her. If she'd gone to him, she thought now, surely he would have helped her. Instead of being so stupidly willful, and scrubbing him, and bringing this ludicrous situation on herself.
Then, when Katrina woke to find one of her meals sitting there, she saw something else. A clipping from a newspaper in Spanish, with a picture of herself. Attached to it was an English translation. Katrina read it in horrified fascination. It was an obituary her obituary describing how she'd been lost in a light plane while flying from one island to another with someone whose name had probably been manufactured, like the rest of the story. She compared the translation and the story and had no reason to doubt it. Someone, she realized, had gone to the trouble to let the world know she no longer existed. Clint, she thought what if Clint had seen this?
It was then that she broke down and cried, for many long hours, sinking into the deepest of depressions. And finally into tortured sleep, curled up naked on her mattress. When she awoke, she picked at her food and soon, in spite of that fact that she didn't feel at all tired, fell back into slumber once again.
She had a nightmare this time, again. Someone was choking her; she was being throttled by a snake; a noose was tightening around her neck. She was in a New England-style stocks, her wrists and ankles pinioned.
Katrina awoke, covered with sweat. She felt as if she were gagging, but when she raised a hand to her neck, she shrieked with terror. For on her wrist there was a metal band on both wrists, and on both her ankles. With a sense of dread, she touched her neck. Yes, there too. Somehow she had been drugged, and someone had attached these bracelets. The horror was getting worse how would it continue, she wondered, and when, or how, would it end? She studied the five bracelets that had been attached to her body, noting the rings that were part of each.
After this, she managed to stay awake for what she figured must have been fifteen or twenty hours. Or twenty-five or thirty. It was impossible to tell. She was afraid to sink into unconsciousness again, afraid of what might come next. The discomfort of the steel bands biting into her soft skin helped her stay awake.
When she awoke, it was with piercing screams again. Something had touched her! She catapulted off the bed and looked for the intruder. With terror, yet relief, she saw only a black dog, sitting panting by her bed. She froze as it got up and sauntered over to her. It was a terrible-looking thing enormous and sleek, with great shining teeth, just like the one she had seen the night she arrived. Unable to move, she stared at it as he for it was noticeably a he came panting over and sniffed at her. Her skin crawled at first as the wet nose poked her. She was sure he would start to devour her at any instant.
But after a few moments she realized that in spite of its formidable appearance, he was a friendly dog. Satisfied with his investigation, he licked her hand and sat down in front of her, wiggling his tail and studying her.
Katrina felt a gush of relief. Here was a living thing! In the same room with her. She was overjoyed. She reached out and scratched him behind the ears, and he responded by wiggling his stub of a tail even more. The boredom and tension which had been relentlessly building up left her as she made friends with her new companion. For what seemed like hours, she played with him, making him do tricks, running around the room with him, chasing him and making him chase her under and over the bed.
Finally, she was tired and got up onto the high bed again. He jumped up and lay down beside her, snuggling his long, tightly-muscled body against her soft form. She scratched his stomach and, without thinking, hugged him to her, shivering with a strange excitement at the way his short, bristly hair tickled her delicate skin.
When she awoke, he was still there. And so was a new tray full of food. There was more than usual this time, and Katrina knew why. She fed him from her food, marveling at his intelligence at the way he waited for her hand instead of flinging himself headlong into the tray. When they had finished eating, only one thing puzzled her. But the problem was solved, to her amazement, when the dog headed into the lavatory and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, relieved himself in her shower stall.
All of that waking day, she played with him, and talked to him too. It was extraordinary, she thought, how human a dog could be. How intelligent how even nicer than a human. For he didn't talk back but just stuck by her side with constant affection. The fact that she had him with her had virtually dissolved her worries about when and how she would be released from her captivity.
"Up, up," she commanded him, as they romped around the room together. He obeyed her and jumped up, his great panting tongue swabbing one of her breasts in the process. Katrina felt a stab of guilty excitement, looking down at her wet breast. Then she looked slowly at the handsome animal, suddenly seeing its magnificent canine body in a new light. No, no! she thought to herself, trying to drive out of her mind the freakish thought which had just occurred to her. I won't, she insisted to herself, and got back up on the bed, trying to ignore the brutish animal temporarily.
But he jumped right up on the bed, panting almost as if he had read her mind and were laughing at her. Katrina felt his hot breath on her side and tried to fight the idea away again. She pushed at him, trying to make him leave. But he disregarded her hand, lowering himself to his belly and crawling right up next to her. She put her hand on him again to shove him away. But this time she couldn't. Under her palm and against her side she felt his prickly hair, rubbing against her as he panted away.
How could you even dare! she checked herself, but try as she could, the idea wouldn't shake free from her. And the dog would not leave her side. With guilty apprehension, feeling herself sink into an abyss of damnation, she whistled softly to the animal, patting her tummy at the same time. He pawed her and crawled closer to her, poking at her responsively with his cold, wet nose. Katrina gasped and closed her eyes as he nudged her breast playfully. She kept her eyes closed, feeling herself stir with a forbidden kind of animal eroticism. She patted herself again, higher up on her body this time, and felt the dog edge closer to her, snuffling his nose against her. Then he licked her again, his tongue rasping directly over the tip of one of her ivory breasts.
Katrina shut her eyes more tightly. Was the dog becoming human, or was she turning into an animal? Her body was answering for her. She opened her eyes and looked at herself, regarding the nipple he had laved with his canine kiss. She watched it burgeon and swell, pulsing to its full coral hardness.
HesitanUy, her mind flashing back to her schoolgirl days, she touched herself there. It was unbearable, she thought. She was being overcome with self-intensified desire. She squeezed the nipple with her fingers, gasping at how much pleasure it gave her. She brought her whole hand into play first on one breast, then on both, massaging and caressing herself, teasing herself to an abandoned state of autoeroticism.
Gods! she thought, the animal has a mind of its own. For the Doberman had intruded himself where both her hands were now. As if it were a game and she was hiding something from him, he poked under her hands, nuzzling against her already aroused and burning flesh in the process. But Katrina didn't stop him. She was too overcome with the novel sensations the animal inspired in her.
Instead, she began to massage her entire body, trying to imitate with her own hands the gestures which men and even Alya had recently employed to bring pleasure to her ripe body. From nowhere, as her fingers slid further and further down her body and the dog nuzzled her with increasing playfulness, the image of a church swam into her mind. It clouded into a picture of her parents, then of Clint, and all her friends. She wrestled with herself, but it was no use. The images faded and all she was aware of was the burning feeling in her flesh and the mounting ache deep in her groin.
Torn between anguished guilt and the compulsion of rising lust, Katrina writhed on the bed. But this only increased the dog's playfulness. He rose up on his haunches and hovered over her, pawing at her even as she tried to brush him away, scraping the hard pads of his paws over her, scratching her skin in a delicious kind of torment. Katrina yielded to herself completely then.
She lay back on the mattress, spreading her legs, letting the animal nuzzle and paw her more. One of her hands crept between her thighs and began a most intimate exercise on her secret parts. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her mouth opened wide as her breath came more heavily and harshly. Her body was telling her what it needed and what it demanded. And the more it demanded of her, the more she tried to appease it, stoking its inner fires of lust to a greater and more forbidden heat.
She knew what was happening to her could feel the dog and knew that his actions were becoming less playful and more purposefully minded, as she rolled about under his insistent bids for attention. But she couldn't stop now. What she was doing to herself was too crucial, too desperate, too damnable for her to stop! A dark and lustfully sinister purpose had taken hold of her and was driving her on, in turn rousing the animal in both of them to a greater pitch of excitement.
Now her body cried out for a tool of pleasure. A cataclysmic want had surged up in her and was wracking her entire being. And now the animal was on her, in the insistent, insidious way that an animal will have at a human being, no matter who's watching or what else is taking place.
But Katrina wanted the brute to come at her, with all its weight and devilish intent. With a groan of anguish and pagan abandon, she writhed around until she was on her stomach. And groaning more, under the weight of her godless actions, she raised her pulsing, lust-torn body on her knees and elbows.
The animal needed no further prompting. Its profile had been transformed by excitement, displaying its own evidence of arousal. Katrina sobbed to herself in schizophrenic despair as she felt the dog scramble up on her, its forepaws raking her waist and its scalding breath boiling on her back.
She screamed in pain and nearly collapsed under its weight as the animal lunged at her and missed. Frantically, she squirmed under the terrible urgency of the beast, trying to accommodate herself now that she had no power to check the punishment she had invited. Again she screamed as the panting dog stepped about on the treacherous mattress, thrusting himself at her vulnerable parts with increasing rapidity.
But in an instant, Katrina's screaming turned to a low moan a shuddering sound she had never before heard herself utter. Her fingers clenched into fists and her toes curled. For now the animal was in her and Katrina was experiencing something unlike anything she had ever dreamed of. It was so good that she grabbed the bedposts with her hands and raised herself higher in the air, letting the brute drive more deeply into her with his catatonic, pell-mell rhythm. Nothing had ever felt like this before. And as quickly as the monstrous animal reached the peak of his frenzy in the woman, her body responded to the unnatural intensity and matched the quick but overpowering cycle of lustful execution and completion. For a brief eternity her whole being became a giant tuning fork, quivering and then reacting in spasms to the pace and power of the Doberman's finish in her. And she sank forward on the bed, the last sensation her mind registered being the feel of the brute's slobber trickling down to the small of her back.
CHAPTER NINE
Clint and Cheyenne sat out in the back of the small seafood bar, on a little projection of the pier that looked out over the islanders' boats as they bobbed in the sea. They had been discussing Clint's foray of last night and what it had produced. Cheyenne had been skeptical at first, but he was a believer after Clint laid his cards on the table and told the ex-film veteran about the state he had found his murdered sister in.
"Well, it was good you got the pictures," Cheyenne was saying, taking a sip from a tall glass of cold island punch. "Not that you can do anything with them, like I told you before. The police will not do anything, and the consulates cannot. If you were not what you are, the only thing you could do would be to peddle your pictures to some tabloid.
"But you are a newspaperman. If you do things right and learn the right things, you can be a great force for good down here."
"Never mind that. I just want to get the bastards who did that to Shirley!" Clint muttered.
"Ah, you must be bigger than that. For if you are not, those who are bigger than you will crush you like a worm." Cheyenne made a rubbing motion between his thumb and forefinger. "Before, you know, when you were speaking of theories, I was not so interested. Now that your sister is dead, I am sorry for you, but that still doesn't interest me so much. I have heard of others dying in much the same manner.
"What does interest me is that you might be the man who could do what all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot do."
Clint looked at him narrowly, not appreciating the man's flippant tone.
"I am not joking," Cheyenne went on. "The revenue people cannot do it; the other authorities cannot do it; the government cannot do it because it is afraid. Afraid of the power of the few men who control this part of the world.
"It is real power, Westwood, like nowhere else except maybe in South America or Sicily, from what I hear. The only thing that can touch that kind of corrupt power is publicity. That is why I say I'm interested. Before, when I was talking to you, you were just a reporter with some hunches. Now you have a stake in your story. And I am going to lead you directly to the story. Because now I know you will follow it through. Now I trust you, and now I will help you."
"You'd help me if you explained what the devil you were ranting about," said Clint sourly. He had not fully recovered from the shock of what he had seen last night.
"Explanations! Yankees always want explanations," Cheyenne said, gesturing with his hands. "I am giving you information. Look," he said, drawing on the small table between them with a used match. "This is where we are the half of San Dozes the world sees. This is where they are the half that lets the world see what they should decide it should see. You remember I explained to you about the Villa de los Orquideas. This is it, at the other end of the island. Inside is the empire the men; the system; the power that gives me my liquor import license; the power that sells you your ticket in New York; the power that leads your sister to kill herself."
"Swell," said Clint, "so?"
"So," continued Cheyenne. "During the weekend, the men with the power go their separate ways, controlling the Caribbean. But on the weekend, every weekend, they gather here. What they do makes the Hollywood I knew in the twenties look like Freedom-land today. But that doesn't concern you. You will go there during the week. I will show you how to get in. You play a few days of what do they call it? Ah! 'I Spy,' no? You do this. Then you go back to the States and start writing your stories. It is simple. It will only take courage. I will go with you. Is it a deal?"
"It's a deal!" nodded Clint, raising his glass as Cheyenne toasted him. "But," he added, "if that villa's anything like I think it is, I don't see how two men are going to get their hands on what I need."
"No worry," Cheyenne assured him. "I told you, it only takes courage. The tax people, the FBI, Interpol these people do not deal in courage any longer. It is always letters and bugs and red-tape. So they do not get inside. One needs to be inside. With one who knows the villa inside and out. And I am that one!"
"Cheyenne, old buddy," Clint said, catching on. "The people on the Pulitzer committee are going to love you!"
"Nah," said the islander. "I can remember back when the Oscar people wouldn't even look at my nomination because I wasn't Anglo-Saxon and a Princeton graduate. The States do not change so fast."
"You'd be surprised," said Clint. "Let's fill that jug back up and discuss it."
"That'll be a big jug, then, Yankee," laughed Cheyenne. "We got a whole weekend to do our discussing."
* * *
Katrina was lying on her back, with the dog sleeping restlessly by her side. She was praying something she hadn't done in years. But after she had recovered from her horror at her own depravity a few meals ago, she had remembered Alya's parting words. It didn't matter that she had just heard them then. They had become appropriate practically immediately. For where did reality become non-existent if not in this museum-like compartment where Katrina had betrayed herself as never before? So she had turned to prayer a very direct sort of prayer, in which she attempted to find what was left of the person she knew to be herself, the person she had abandoned so long ago. Maybe, she thought intending no humor that was why the dog was stirring so uneasily, because she was praying. Served the brute right.
At that instant, something extraordinary happened. The door to her room opened. Katrina sat bolt upright at the noise. She had become so used to her confinement that she felt not the slightest bit of embarrassment when the little man she knew from days or was it weeks ago walked in. "Your master will see you now," he announced quite simply.
Katrina merely stared at him, wanting to ask him a million questions, from where in hell was her luggage to who in hell called himself her "master." But the confinement had done its job well. She didn't ask him anything.
Nor did she make any move when the man came forward with what looked like a dog-chain. But Katrina knew instinctively whom the chain was for, because the Doberman had no collar. The small man leaned forward and clipped one end of the chain to the ring attached to the steel circlet around her neck.
He did not have to lead her with it. Katrina got up off the bed and followed him out of the room, her eyes fixed on the silvery swinging chain that led from her neck to his small hairy hand. He led her back down the staircase they had ascended the night she came and into the central hall. Here he motioned her over to a writing stand on which lay a piece of parchment. Katrina read it soberly:
"I, Katrina Nadie, being of sound mind and body, did willingly undertake to come to the Villa de los Orquideas. I understand that I have ceased to exist to the outside world for a period of..." Katrina saw the phrase "two months" written in the blank..."dating from this day. During this time I will happily undertake whatever duties my hosts require of me, no matter how they affect me now or afterward. I understand that I shall be returned to the place from whence I came, in perfect health, and that I will erase all memory of my stay here, under pain of death."
Katrina's tormented mind managed to summon up one word as she read the document over once more: "fantastic." Another touch of the medieval circus, she thought, although if this nonsense was supposed to be binding, she was glad to see the stipulation about health and the duration of her stay. All the same, this wasn't turning out to be quite what she expected. But she signed the document.
She was then led through one room after another, the Doberman padding silently along beside her. Katrina suddenly realized why she felt so funny it was the light, sunlight, and the impact of new surroundings that were disorienting her. She paused to get a better look at her surroundings. Instantly, there was a sharp pain at her neck as the little man jerked on the leash, making the steel collar bite into her skin. And Katrina realized that whatever was going on here wasn't considered a game by some people.
They turned off the long, vaulted hall with its paneling and paintings, and Katrina found herself standing in a small, stark room. The little man dropped the chain and left the room. Katrina and the dog were left facing a pock-marked man in a sweatshirt, who regarded her naked form with a cynical eye.
"You are to be a bitch this weekend," he said slowly, measuring out his thickly pronounced words in order to let them sink in on Katrina's bemused brain. So, she thought, it was the weekend. She had been cooped up for nearly a week. The voice broke back in on her thoughts.
"I have orders to train you in obedience trials so that you will be fit to serve your master." Katrina was about to smile, but she halted when the man dug into a trunk next to him and pulled out what looked like a fur costume.
"Put it on," he commanded. Katrina took the thing from him and regarded it suspiciously. It was some kind of hairy coverall outfit. She climbed into the pants part and let the man help her into the rest. When he had zipped it up the back, Katrina inspected her new appearance. The dark-colored fur suit covered her whole body from her neck to her toes, encasing her feet and hands. But there were two exceptions to its coverage. One consisted of two holes through which her breasts bulged in separate naked splendor. The other was that the garment was cut away from her navel to the small of her back, allowing access to her from in front or behind. In spite of the apertures, Katrina was immediately becoming warm. The costume was tight all over her body and seemed to be lined with the kind of rubber used in skindiving suits. She realized that instead of hands and feet now, she had rubber padded paws at the end of each limb. Still, she thought, it didn't make her seem terribly dog-like, if that's what they were after.
But then the man produced a narrow cord which splayed in two at one end. He pushed her head down until she bent over. Then he quickly snapped one end of the cord to the ring in her steel collar and, running the other two ends of the Y through two small holes in the ankles of the costume, clipped them to the steel bands above her feet. Then he stepped back.
Katrina's immediate move was to stand erect again. But all she got was a sharp pain in her back for her trouble. For the cord had been attached precisely to prevent her from straightening up. She was bent over by it, and could not straighten her body. Automatically, as she felt herself growing a bit dizzy from the position, she reached down to the floor with her furry arms.
"Better," said the man, quietiy. "Much better."
Katrina suddenly apprehended the fact that the rig was designed to keep her on all fours. The man re-attached the silver chain to her and motioned her to walk in a circle around him on her hands and feet. Feeling like an ass, Katrina stumbled around, nearly tripping over herself. They didn't pull any punches when it came to real humiliation, she thought, as she shuffled along, her breasts jogging and swaying where they hung out of her furry covering.
After a minute of these exertions, she felt her body covered with sweat inside the stuffy suit. Deciding that this had gone far enough, she paused to catch her breath. No sooner had she done so than she felt the sting of a sharp blow on her rear and, shaking her hair aside, saw that she had just been hit by a short lash that her trainer held in his hand.
Again he motioned her around, and, gasping for breath, the sweat running down her stomach and down her arms and legs to the paws of the suit, she struggled to comply. She felt a sharp jerk on the collar and stopped, swaying as her muscles cried out against the treatment they were receiving.
Then he put her through a whole list of commands, and, for the first time, as she sat and rolled over and heeled and gave the man her paw, she realized that a dog's life was not everything it seemed.
When he seemed satisfied that she would do, he took in the chain until she had to crouch only inches from his leg. Then he walked briskly out of the room, forcing her to shamble after him, trying not to choke herself on the cord that led from her neck to her ankles, or get her knuckles stepped on by his heavily shod feet.
With her hair tumbling around her face, she couldn't see where they were heading, so intently did she have to concentrate on the floor beneath and ahead of her. After a long walk over carpets and tiled floors, they went up a flight of steps and were out in the fresh air. What a relief to be outside again, Katrina felt, as she was pulled along. For an instant, with the blood rushing to her brain and her heart pounding, she recalled where she'd been a few days ago, and considered the outrage of where she was now. Orgies, yes, if they could have brought her back the pictures. But this? It was incredible...
But now her trainer was running along a path and Katrina was working feverishly to catch up with him. Several times she tripped on her hands and fell but each time was pulled forcibly along until she could regain the excruciating posture necessary for motion. She thought she would drown in her own sweat, the way it was sloshing about under the furry exterior of her costume. Either that or die of heat prostration. She realized with a shock that her mouth was wide open, and that in gasping for breath, she was pantomiming a dog's panting.
At that point, the path under her feet turned to flagstone. She saw the ridge of a swimming pool from between the strands of her hair. And then they had stopped. She craned her neck and looked up, as a chorus of laughter and loud "bravos" reached her ears. She was facing a small group of men, seated around the side of the pool in their bathing trunks and sport-shirts. This must be the group she was after, Katrina thought, raising one paw to wipe the sweat and hair out of her eyes. At least it better be.
Then one of the men, a short balding one with a protruding belly, got up from the group and came over to where she was crouching. He took the chain from her trainer and thanked him. And Katrina found herself stumbling along after him over to the circle of men, who could scarcely control their laughter.
"She's beautiful, Bertie, but where're her papers?" one of them cried.
"Hey, pooch, nice doggie," said another, reaching over and scratching Katrina on the back.
"Make her play dead, Bertie; give us a look at those boobs," shouted a third.
Her "master" laughed in agreement and gave a savage jerk on the chain. "Play dead, bitch!" he commanded. Katrina lay on her side, feeling the sweat ooze between her flesh and the hot suit where it touched the even hotter flagstones. "C'mon, play dead," the man called Bertie snarled, giving Katrina a vicious kick in the side with his slippered foot.
Katrina gave a little yelp of pain and turned on her back, her hair falling back into a puddle of the pool water. She crooked her arms and legs in what she thought would be a convincing portrait of a dead dog.
"Beautiful, hey fantastic! Is she housebroken yet?" The men roared with laughter.
"Get a look at those," said Bertie proudly, kicking Katrina's arms aside and exposing her breasts, which glistened with sweat in the sun. "Not every bitch that comes along is hung like that, huh?" he asked his friends. Then he brought his slipper down square on Katrina's soft mounds and mashed them cruelly against her as she cried out with pain. She was beginning to feel a real terror as she looked fully into the man called Bertie's face and saw the expression of sadistic glee that made it so ugly.
"Hey, girl, here, girl," called one of the men, throwing a corn chip toward Katrina. It landed on the stone a few inches from her head. She paused, but as soon as she caught a glimpse of Bertie's foot going back for another kick, turned and ate the chip, picking it off the flagstone with her teeth.
After a while the men tired of their games, and Katrina was given the order to lie down, which she did as best she could, rolling back on her side. Bertie sat almost directly over her, slipping his slippers off and kneading her naked breasts with his stubby toes. But Katrina put up with the torture in order to concentrate on the conversation. But the men were talking about nothing which sounded important.
Then another burst of laughter went up from the group, and Katrina saw the trainer leading another grotesquely-dressed female toward the group. When she saw this one, she felt lucky, for the woman had been dressed up as a monkey. She had a costume that made her resemble a chimp, although it was cut away to expose the same basic elements that Katrina's did. Katrina stared in disbelief at the way the woman was walking, her legs bowed like a monkey's, until she saw the short cords that led from her ankles to what was apparently a sort of girdle under the monkey suit.
The men were even more delighted by the monkey and spent a long while putting her through her paces, insisting that she perform all the obscene gestures for which monkeys are noted. Katrina tried to close her eyes on the scene and figure out how she could relieve the ache in her back, which resulted from not being able to straighten her legs out, trussed as they were to her neck. But she was not to be left alone.
At the insistence of the group of men, the "monkey woman" began to tease Katrina, pulling her hair and even to the delight of the men pinching and pulling at her exposed breasts. Katrina's eyes filled with tears as she tried to avoid this new degradation. She couldn't understand how the other girl could do this, until she saw the look of delight .on her face. The other was jumping up and down, making monkey-like noises and hurting Katrina too much for her to ignore.
She hit out at the monkey with her paws, only to receive another kick, right between the legs, from her master. "C'mon," he snarled. "Fight like a real bitch!" he demanded, jerking Katrina to all fours. Katrina was overcome with confusion. But then the monkey got behind her and, as the men slapped their thighs with merriment, goosed her cruelly through the slit in the dog-costume. Katrina whirled and tried to jump the monkey woman. But the cord brought her up short, and she merely toppled on the other.
The monkey grabbed one of her dangling breasts in each hand and shook them mercilessly, causing Katrina to cry out. Doing the only thing she could in retaliation, Katrina lunged down with her head and sank her teeth into the other's ripe flesh. She actually felt a thrill of revenge as the monkey let go her globes and beat her fists on Katrina's head, before scrambling away.
All the rest of the day there was no let-up. By dinner-time, as she lay at her master's feet, Katrina was nauseated by her own rubbery smell of stale perspiration which emanated from the dog-suit. But it was after dinner, when the company had gathered in the building's great hall, that the worst came. Someone had let Katrina's Doberman back in, and he came snuffling over to her. Katrina saw with alarm that the animal was aroused for some reason, and she was more than star-tied when he went directly for her backside and tried to mount her. Then she realized that the suit must have been impregnated with something that dogs react to. For before she could defend herself, he was driving at her like a fiend, his excitement increased by the cheers and yelling from the men.
Katrina collapsed to her elbows as she felt her sides embraced by the frantic male brute. And again she was forced to cry out as he missed his mark, bruising her delicate flesh before he rammed his way into her. This was the best show yet, and Bertie prolonged it by dragging Katrina around by her chain, so that she was forced to crawl after him as the dog hung crazily on her and pounded against her.
Later, up in Bertie's bedroom, she had to undergo this particular disgrace a third time. Bertie's eyes gleamed with vicarious pleasure as Katrina crouched on the bedroom floor, trying to make it easy for the dog so that he wouldn't tear her to ribbons. Then, when the dog had taken his pleasure, it was the man's turn. Stripping his fat, repellent body naked, Bertie flung himself on Katrina, just as the dog had.
But he was seeking a different kind of pleasure, nowhere near as innocent as the Doberman's. Katrina screamed in pain, and her sobs filled the room as the fat, grunting man ravaged her body in a way that she had never thought possible. And later, as she lay on the hard floor, trying to find a position to sleep in that would afford some relief to her vilely abused body, she planned how she would search for the corpulent sadist when she got out, and what she would do to him when she met him in the outside world.
Katrina was waked early in the morning by her trainer, who unfastened the cords and beckoned her to follow him. She had to lean on him for support, her back hurt so badly, as they left the bedroom. Once down in the room she had been outfitted in, he helped her out of the whole wretched outfit and made her take a shower in a nearby facility. While she was working to scrub the filth from her battered body, another woman came in and Katrina recognized her instantly as the one who had played the role of the monkey that day.
"Darling, hello!" gushed the monkey-woman. "Is this your first weekend? It's mine! Isn't it just too super?"
Katrina eyed the woman with suspicion. She didn't see anything at all super about it, but she didn't want to give herself away.
"What are you going to be doing today? I've got Santis a divine man; craves you-know-what." The woman made an obscene gesture that turned Katrina's stomach. "He can't get enough of it. Isn't it fab being here?"
"It's neat," replied Katrina evenly, trying to appear more aloof than this giddy young thing. "But I am new here who are all these men? Do they own this place?"
"Of course, darling," laughed the other, slipping into the shower and making a great sensuous show out of soaping her body. "They own the whole island, all the other islands; they own everything. If you get a good rep here, you've got it made anywhere in the world!"
"Have you got it made?" asked Katrina.
"Have I!" scoffed the other. "Listen, sweetheart, I was a staffer at St. Mondulac for six years. And you know how bad that is just about a cut above what they do at the Sandozes. Only there, instead of getting blackmail pix, we work strictly on a couple basis. You get the husband and wife into a Sandozes-type set, see? And you threaten them right on the spot with exposure."
"Quite a system," agreed Katrina. "But why did you leave it for this?"
"Are you kidding?" asked the other, stepping out of the shower and toweling herself vigorously. "Where else in the world could you find all this, and be in on so much fun. But if you really want to know, there are people who would give their left tit to be here, and I'm one of them for a simple reason. If you prove yourself here, and Napoleon trusts you, you can get yourself cut into the syndicate. Imagine! A whole setup of your own. An island even!"
The girl stopped her enthusiastic babbling as the trainer came over and took the damp towel from her.
Katrina noticed that several other girls had been brought to the room. All of them were decked out in extraordinary costumes or decorations. It was like a wax museum of horrors come to life.
Katrina nudged her informant, wanting more information. "This Napoleon. Does he live here?"
"Only on the weekends," the other replied. "But he spends most of his time in the conservatory. That's where the syndicate has its headquarters. He flies in for the weekend. And flies out for the week tending to business. Got to keep the operations ship-shape, you know."
At this point, they were interrupted by the trainer, who came over to them and opened what, it seemed to Katrina, was some sort of elaborate make-up kit.
"Glad you girls get along so well together," he rasped. "You'll be working together tonight. Stand still!"
Taking out a variety of tubes and beauty devices, the trainer went to work on Katrina first. With oversized lipsticks, he decorated her body, drawing multicolored rings and lines around her breasts and down her sides and front. Then he did the same to the other girl. They resembled two rejects from a lollipop factory, thought Katrina, with the first amusement she had felt all day.
The trainer handed them a slip of paper and sent them out of the room. Apparently, her companion knew what it was all about, for she led the way without hesitation, winding through the endless galleries and staircases. Katrina followed her along, memorizing as best she could what she assumed was the basic plan of the building. When they had reached something like the third floor above the main hall and gone along a long, narrow passageway, the other girl halted.
"That door leads to the conservatory," she whispered. Katrina looked in the direction the other pointed to and saw a door at the end of the passage. "You get in there," her friend whispered, "and you've made it, honey. You've got more power than the chairman of U.S. Steel!"
Then the door they were standing in front of opened. The girl went in, and Katrina followed. Inside was a bare room, with nothing but a mattress on the floor. Or so Katrina thought until she looked at the ceiling and saw the banks of spotlights that hung there. And as she was studying them, the normal light in the room was suddenly extinguished. The spotlights started glowing to life in a fantastic random pattern of colored illumination.
Something moved in the rainbow atmosphere something that looked like a moving prism. Then Katrina realized that it was a human figure, a male body, which had been decorated like her own body and that of the other. Decorated with designs that contained fluorescent pigments. What a lovely sight, she thought, as she noticed how the designs changed under the different colors of the flashing lights. None of them were moving. But their bodies seemed plastic seemed to flow and eddy like abstract designs shimmering in the air.
The figure whoever he was, stepped forward and lay casually down on the mattress, although his motions made the swirling lines on his body resemble a fluent and changing portrait in elastic neon. Katrina's companion lay down on one side of the man, and when she hesitated, motioned Katrina to the other side of him.
Katrina took the cue and stretched out. When she was on the mattress, looking up, she noticed the mirror that hung directly over them. In it their reflections became a miraculously coalesced image of vibrant, pulsing colors. Katrina felt the man's hand slide over her body and, turning her head, saw that his other hand was on her companion.
It did not take long, so relieved was she by this particular diversion after the previous day's cruel sport, for Katrina to join in the love-making being initiated by the other two. Only this time, as at few other times in her life, as their three bodies became endlessly intertwined in passionate juxtaposition, Katrina never shut her eyes watching with hypnotic fascination the display of light and color that accompanied the physical convolutions that eventually swept her away into the night's lengthy lustful program.
CHAPTER TEN
It was Monday evening when Clint and Cheyenne neared the fence surrounding the villa after a long walk across the island. Each man was dressed in dark pants and wore a black jersey. Each had a knapsack on his back in which was packed not only Clint's equipment, but also the tools Cheyenne had assembled for their foray, as well as several days' provisions. It was like old times, Clint thought, like the Marines and a special expeditionary patrol. The thoroughness of their preparations had given him both a complete sense of trust in Cheyenne and a new sense of self-determination. He hadn't thought about Shirley all day now. And with a very military sense of self-discipline, he expunged all thoughts of Katrina and where she might be now from his mind. All his senses and all his former training were at the ready.
The high-voltage fence surrounding the estate was no problem. Working with rubber gloves, Cheyenne attached top wires to two of the fence cables, at a place where the high fence ran close to some thick vegetation. Then he cut the two strands, and he and Clint slipped through the opening. They paused to repair the broken links, using connectors that Cheyenne had fashioned the night before, in anticipation of this one of many problems ahead of them.
Clint followed the big islander on an intricate course through the carefully planted and manicured grounds. When they were within a few hundred yards of the villa, which loomed against the light Caribbean night sky, they stopped. Both men drew from their knapsacks a slingshot-like affair and armed them with the drugged projectiles Cheyenne had produced. Then they crept forward, keeping a distance of about forty yards between them, as they moved up in parallel fashion to the villa.
Clint stopped dead at the same instant Cheyenne had, only a little distance from the villa. For he had heard the dog's panting and in another few seconds saw the great Doberman watchdog trotting in their direction. The dog stopped, confused as they had known he would be, by the two different human scents. He edged closer, beginning to growl in a deep, low tone. Clint looked at Cheyenne and waited until he saw the other's signal. Then both drew back the slings and let fire. The dog jumped back as the two darts hit him simultaneously. And the short yelp of surprise he had given died in his throat as the drugs worked their immediate effect and caused him to collapse, struggling quietly, onto the grass. When he was quite still, Cheyenne moved forward and, upon reaching the sleeping animal, removed the two darts from his hide.
Then they edged right up to the side of the villa. Clint had no idea how they were going to get into it and realized that this was something Cheyenne had never mentioned. But it became instantly clear to him that they were not going to go inside, at least not yet. For at the spot Cheyenne had chosen to guide them to there was another way. Here rose one of the ludicrous stone buttresses that was part of the villa's crazy blend of Gothic and Mediterranean design.
Cheyenne scrambled up it, as a child would a jungle gym, and Clint followed right behind him. After sidling up its arched top where it flared in to the wall, they were about a story and a half off the ground. From here both men made the jump to a low-railinged balcony in sequence. And from there it was a matter of boosting and helping each other up the next three similar balconies. The topmost one gave them easy access to the top of the outer wall, and when they had pulled themselves up over this, they were in the strange shadowland of the villa's elaborate roof.
Hugging the ground as they passed in front of several gables, Clint followed his skillful guide around the projections and fenestrations of the roof-line. Then, tracking on their stomachs with outstretched flat palms, they worked their way up one of the slating sides of the villa's highest projection. Scrambling over some decorative ironwork, they dropped down into a flat space about ten feet square. This was the top of the conservatory's low tower, from which the rest of the roof-village could be observed.
Clint didn't quite realize how much there was to observe until morning, when both men woke as the sun rose high in the sky and poured into their place of concealment. They breakfasted off the provisions and settled down to wait the day out. Clint went back to sleep as Cheyenne kept the first watch, a precaution they observed in spite of the near-perfection of their hiding place.
Later in the day, Clint took over the watch. Rising cautiously, he peered through the ironwork at the view of the world afforded by his lofty perch. In three directions, the lush greenery of the island's jungle blanket spread away from the Italianate gardens and expansive grounds they had trespassed into. In the fourth direction stretched the shimmering blue expanse of the Caribbean, its tidal lines ebbing toward the shoreline of the estate, where Clint could see an elaborate pier facility built to handle large yachts or seaplanes. He noted with interest the motor launch that appeared from time to time, circling the cove and patrolling out onto the sea. Cheyenne had been correct in everything so far, he thought. The villa was extensively guarded on the outside, the islander had told him, and on its lower floors. But up here, where they were, there were no men or dogs, and no here Clint hoped he was right alarm devices. One does not come to a place like this for years as a deliveryman without taking an interest in the workings of the establishment, had been Cheyenne's airy explanation when Clint had asked him how he knew so much of the villa.
But Clint was soon distracted from his aerial study of the estate by noises coming from a portion of the roof that appeared to be a sort of garden-terrace. By standing on his tiptoes, he could peer down through the ironwork at the terrace, an effort which proved to be well worthwhile.
For there had emerged from somewhere three naked women, who strolled onto the terrace. One, who was covered with what seemed to be a childish display of finger-painting applied to a body, flopped down on a chaise-lounge. Clint's brow furrowed when he looked at the other two, one of whom lay down gingerly on one of the many pads that were strewn around the terrace. For she was covered with long red marks, and they weren't the product of someone's amateur art work. They were deep welts, raised on the soft female flesh, Clint could only imagine, by the most diabolical sort of flagellation. The victimized woman's companion knelt down next to her and from what Clint could see, appeared to be applying some sort of lotion to the prostrate form's bruised skin.
Clint wondered how many more naked females simply strolled around the villa. And he was answered some time later when he caught sight of two small figures whose nakedness stood out on the green grass five stories below him like ivory chess-pieces on a dark blanket. Well, he reflected, Cheyenne hadn't been exaggerating in the slightest. The only thing that mystified him was who these women were and where they came from. What they were doing here was no great mystery, deduced Clint, thinking about their unusual appearance. He sat down in the shadows of the tower well in which they were encamped and began checking his cameras for the night's work that lay ahead of him. It was some time later that the sounds of laughter drifting up from the terrace distracted him and caused him to peer down at the naked figures again.
He noticed something then that he hadn't before several of the beautiful bodies that were cavorting beneath him had some sort of steel bands fastened to various limbs, like the circlets one always saw on the arms and legs of dancing bears in old woodcuts. The laughter increased, and Clint strained until he could see where it was coming from.
Three more women had arrived on the scene a redhead, a brunette and a girl with a luxurious head of glistening black hair. The one with the black hair was being held down on the terrace by the other two, and was largely concealed from his gaze. In fact, all that Clint could see of her was the hair, tumbling out on the stone terrace, and two golden legs, which were kicking about wildly. For over this woman's body the other two were leaning in order to deliver what seemed to be some sort of playful activity that produced the squeals of laughter.
It bothered him, the sound of that laughter, and he didn't know why for a minute. But then, as he kept watching the trio of unabashed, playful nudes, his mind slowly put two and two together, with all the uncomprehending deliberation of a child setting one alphabet block on top of another. The sound of the laughter slowly identified itself. And the sight of the hair, the rich, glossy mane that spilled out from the victimized woman who thrashed about under the other two sensuous bodies, identified itself.
Clint's fingers curled tightly on the ironwork, and he set his jaw to insure that he wouldn't betray his own and Cheyenne's presence by shouting out. For now he had recognized the hair, the laugh, and even the glimpses of the body that struggled under the other two. They belonged to Katrina! How, or why, he could not begin to explain to himself. The fact was simply that it was she, the girl he had been so crazy over, down there on the terrace below.
The laughter had begun to subside and Clint, who was virtually in a state of shock, realized that the three women were not just playing at some light-hearted game. The redhead and the brunette had something else very definitely in mind. There was no mistaking the motions of their heads and hands. Clint realized with revulsion that they were making love to his beloved that here on this same roof was the woman he had thought highly enough of to humble himself to her, being seduced by two lascivious companions. When he saw Katrina cease her wild struggling and saw her arms go around the body of the redhead, who was hunched over the upper half of her, concealing from Clint's view those abundant fruits of Katrina's body which he had known so well, he could take no more. Slumping down into the shadows of the roost, he sat brooding in confused fury, gnawing on the knuckles on one tightly-balled fist. Now there was a second priority established in his mind that before they left the villa, he would know why Katrina was here, why he had seen her doing what she was with the other two naked wantons, and what her presence in this den of iniquity represented.
By nightfall, after they had dipped into more of their provisions, Clint had finally pushed the matter with all of its raging and consuming force out of his mind. Fighting himself every inch of the way, he prepared himself for the first priority.
When all seemed to be quiet, he and doyenne swung into action. They climbed out of the roost and slid down to the upper portion of the roof. Clinging to the small sill of a window in the blunt tower, Cheyenne brought his glass-cutter into play. In moments, he had etched his way through one of the leaded panes of glass and unloosed the window. As Clint supported him, he lowered himself inside and dropped to the floor, helping the other down.
Stealing along in the darkness, Cheyenne led him to a door and stopped, hardly breathing. Clint listened with him, straining his ears. From the other side of the door, he heard what Cheyenne was listening to the clacking sounds of what sounded like a dog pacing on a tiled floor, its nails betraying its restless presence.
Carefully, Cheyenne reached up and, working with infinitesimal patience, twisted the vintage handle of the door to a position where it was ready to be opened. He motioned to Clint, and the other, understanding intuitively, grasped the handle as Cheyenne let it go. Then Cheyenne pulled off his jersey and knotted it in his hands. With deliberate care, he noiselessly positioned himself by the side of the entrance. Then, after nodding to Clint, the islander deliberately scraped his foot on the floor slowly.
They both held their breath, hearing the clicking noises pause and then speed up, growing louder as the animal on the other side of the wooden portal trotted over to investigate the almost inaudible noise. When Cheyenne was certain that everything was right, he gave Clint a light kick in the leg.
With all the lightning force he could muster, Clint jerked the door wide open. As expected, the animal, who had been only inches from it, charged through it, just beginning a bark of anger and warning. But before the dog could make himself heard, Cheyenne had crashed down on him in a lunging tackle. With the coordinated speed of the practiced stunt-man, he flung his arms forward and then back, cramming the jersey between the dog's jaws and pulling backward with all his strength. Clint was ready as the dog started his furious struggles and, falling on the animal, plunged another of the projectiles into his flesh. Both men held on for dear life, counting the seconds until the animal's energies subsided and the drug took effect. Satisfied that they had incapacitated the brute, they stole cautiously into the next room.
Clint flicked on his pencil flash and shone it around. What it showed him was an immense old conservatory, of the kind formerly used to grow orchids and like things in. Now, however, he saw that it had been converted. Where once there had been broad expanses of glass, there was sheet metal, sealing off the long chamber to the outside world. And where once there had been serried ranks of greenhouse tables, there were now a wealth of filing cabinets and office equipment. At the far end of the room was another, larger door, and over it had been installed the type of light one sees in radio broadcasting studios.
The two men lost no time in getting to work. Cheyenne dug into his knapsack and produced a small butane torch with a cutting tip affixed to it. Lighting it and adjusting the harsh, white flame, he started on one of the filing cabinets, heating the stamped steel around the area of the lock and bending the metal with heavy pliers until it gave way and the lock was twisted out of its place. The whole operation took less than a minute and Cheyenne moved from one cabinet to the next with quick efficiency.
Clint opened the drawers and rifled through their contents. Then, producing his camera with its small but expensive strobe flash, he began flipping through the folders with methodical speed, stopping every now and then to record the contents of a particular sheaf of papers on the long roll of microfilm. For five hours the two men worked with desperate haste Clint changing rolls of film as he documented records whose importance he could only briefly evaluate. Cheyenne followed along behind him, closing up the cabinets, reheating the steel and, using a body mechanic's press, working the metal back around the locks of the top drawers. The man was a genius, Clint thought, filled with boundless admiration for the way in which the islander almost perfectly restored the state and appearance of the cabinets.
From the cabinets, Clint moved on to the seemingly numberless file catalogues, folders and information drums that were arranged around the conservatory. The room was filled with innumerable blue flashes of lightning as the camera's strobe attachment clicked over every record, every piece of paper in the place.
There were some things he did not have time for such as the immense rack which stretched along the wall and held countless folders which, when Clint had checked at random through them, were filled solely with photographs of a baser and lewder sort than Clint had ever laid eyes on before.
One thing they had left time for the biggest problem was the small office safe that sat on casters near a large executive-type desk. They had prepared for it, however, and were getting ready to tackle it, having probed everything else in the room, when Cheyenne suddenly grabbed Clint's arm with a touch that told Clint something was wrong.
Cheyenne padded over to the door at the other end of the conservatory and listened intently. Someone was fooling with it from the other side. Clint drew his commando-knife and joined his friend at the door. Then the door seemed to tremble slightly, and the light over their heads suddenly went on. Clint was just going to reach up to turn it off when Cheyenne cautioned him not to. Instead, the islander began stealthily unlocking the great tumbler-type lock on the door. Clint stood ready with his knife, as Cheyenne repeated his performance of earlier on.
Having made sure the locks were loosed, he suddenly flung the door open. He and Clint coiled in anticipation of an intruder who would have to be summarily dealt with. But instead of an employee of the villa, they found themselves face to face with a lovely, young girl, who stood frozen with fright.
"Katrina," gasped Clint, staring at the naked girl, whose eyes were practically popping out of her head at the sight of him. "What in hell?"
Katrina stood there, unable to move. Was this really Clint she was seeing before her own eyes here in the secret bastion of the empire that Katrina had just found out how to get to from her talkative friend? Clint was smitten by an impulse to throw his arms around the girl, to seize her to him. But the circumstances of her appearance, both now and earlier in the day, had him flabbergasted.
Katrina was the first one to regain sensibility as the three of them stood rooted to the floor. "Oh, Clint!" she gasped, lurching forward and falling heavily into his arms, her naked body pressing against him and her fingers tightening vise-like on his arms.
Clint recoiled. He grabbed her and shoved her away at arm's length, about to speak. Then he saw Cheyenne give a warning sign of silence and watched the islander ease the door shut.
"Where have you been? What the devil are you doing here?" He shook her like a rag doll as she went limp, with glazed eyes, in his arms. "How long have you been in on this?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
But Katrina just shook her head dumbly. When Clint snapped her body so that her head jerked up and her face emerged from the tumbling masses of her thick, black hair, he saw that the tears were streaming down her face. But he didn't feel sorry for her. All he could remember was what he had seen that afternoon. And on top of that, the image of his dead sister, in all her gruesome condition, came back to him, identified with the building they had sneaked into.
"You know the lady?" Cheyenne asked. So far the islander had not reacted in the slightest to the mysterious interruption.
Clint turned to speak and found he was at a loss for words. He turned his eyes back to the weeping girl. "You were tricking me all the time, weren't you," he croaked. "Suckering me in? What did you have planned for me, eh?" He raided all the bones in her body as he shook her in his fury.
Katrina was nearly overcome with the hopelessness of trying to even begin to explain. Finally she managed to utter a question of her own. "Have you seen any of what's up here?" she asked feebly.
"Everything," Clint nodded. "And I'm going to break it wide open when I get back. Is that what you wanted to know? If you think you're going to get that information to anybody, you're wrong though. You came in at just the wrong time," Clint said, in his old commando-voice, producing the sharp knife he carried with him.
But Katrina was shaking her head wearily. "Clint," she started, her voice as soft, but it was not the voice of one who had betrayed him, thought Clint. The sound of it, calling his name as she had done only days ago, when they were the happiest lovers on earth, made Clint's heart thump wildly.
"What?" he responded, taking none of the edge off his voice. He still couldn't begin to trust her, especially now that Cheyenne was looking at his watch and clearly growing restless.
"Pictures," she mumbled. "The pictures. Where are they?"
Clint didn't understand at first. He thought she was referring to those he had been taking of the syndicate's files. It occurred to him that she was trying to coerce them from him. He shoved her away, immediately sorry he had done so, when she stumbled back and fell with force to the floor.
"The pictures," she said, "please, oh please. Did you find them?"
Clint was baffled by her behavior, but Cheyenne understood now. He pointed to the long, low rack of folders that were filled with photographic prints and negatives. Katrina instantly started up and went to the rack. As the two men watched, she flicked through the tags that marked the alphabetical order of the files. Then, after several minutes, after she had skipped down several feet of the rack, she stopped and drew one of the folders out.
Trembling, she walked over to Clint and handed it to him. He took the folder from her and opened it, and started with astonishment. It wasn't possible, he thought. But there she was. His beloved one, in hundreds of contact prints and negatives, Katrina in every sordid and grotesque posture of abandon Clint had ever heard of. He studied them in disbelief, his mind creaking to a halt as he tried to think of an explanation for the evidence of Katrina's shamelessness, photographed in concert with all those other, naked bodies in an orgiastic pageant.
He looked at her with an expression of complete bewilderment, trying to mouth the question "why?" With her eyes blazing, she turned the file he held in his hands, until at the very end appeared a printed sheet marked "Time-of-Your-Life Tours." Clint recognized it, for it resembled exactly the copy of the tour-contract he had signed before coming to this wretched island. His eyes followed her finger to the line on which was printed the figure $5000. And suddenly he comprehended everything, his mind reeling from the impact of the conclusion he had drawn. Then Katrina lifted up the paper. Underneath it was a strangely lettered piece of parchment. She grabbed it and folded it into a small packet, which she knotted in her fist. The folder she handed to Cheyenne, who applied his blowtorch to its contents.
"Okay," said Cheyenne. "Now we're getting somewhere. Let's finish up and get the hell out of here. It's getting light."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Working with great speed, the two men went to the office safe and, straining with every muscle in their bodies, managed to turn it over on its back so the door was on top. Then Cheyenne took a metal canister from his pocket. From it he poured onto the safe what looked like finely-ground iron filings. It was thermite, a mixture of magnesium and iron filings, the combustible that was impossible to extinguish once it started burning because it produced its own oxygen and fed from it. When Cheyenne had first told Clint about it, Clint didn't believe him, until he remembered the stories of college kids using it to weld streetcar wheels to their steel tracks, disrupting an entire city street, so that the streetcar had to be removed by crane and the rails torn up from the street.
Taking the small blowtorch, Cheyenne pushed the silvery dust around the hinges of the safe and then applied the flame. There were a few seconds of silence as the hissing flame glided over the stuff. More silence, and then Cheyenne, sweating now, adjusted the torch to its hottest flame. The thermite went from a powder to a fluid state, melding itself together under the intense heat. It began to glow, and then became more fluid, changing color and clinging with superheated plasticity to the hinges of the safe. Cheyenne bent more intensely over his work. And then, at last, there was a distinct sputtering. He took the torch away, and Clint saw that the stuff seemed to be shimmering, burning away with a heat of its own now, a destructive heat that could be matched only by that of an arc-welder.
Cheyenne spread the stuff around the edges of the safe's door, and they waited. Before their eyes, the almost indestructible metal of the strong-box dissolved under the fierce combustion produced by the stuff. The hinges eroded away and the door sagged as its supports disappeared. Cheyenne took two short wrecking bars from his kit, and, handing one to Clint, went to work on the door. Keeping their tools away from the thermite, which produced more and more heat as it fed upon itself, they pried the door up from the safe. Quickly, grunting with the effort, they wrenched it off the safe and laid it on the floor. Then Clint nearly dove into the open safe, pulling packets of papers and records out. He disregarded the money and securities he found there. And as Cheyenne helped him by laying the material out on a table, Clint's camera began working overtime, recording on film the most secret of secrets concerning the workings of the Caribbean empire.
"That's it," Clint nodded to his accomplice. They chucked all the papers back into the safe, whose sides were being eaten away now by the thermite. Cheyenne took the canister and emptied more of it into the safe. Being careful to keep away from any contact with the fiery stuff, they laid the door back over the distorted safe. Then Cheyenne emptied the rest of the canister's contents on the floor in careful trails that led in every direction, to the furniture and walls of what appeared to be such a fireproof chamber. The glowing, incendiary sputtering spread where Cheyenne led it. As Katrina and Clint both watched fascinated, it became clear what Cheyenne's real intention was.
"Let's get out of here," the islander said, putting the empty canister, the blowtorch and the tools back in his knapsack. The three of them filed into the conservatory tower, where Cheyenne took his jersey from the jaws of the sleeping dog and put it back on. They went up, over one another, to the window and out onto the tower, dropping down to the roof.
"Wait a minute," Katrina said, and the men paused while she rushed over to the sun terrace. They watched as she stripped the bag-like cloth covering from one of the pads lying there. Tearing a hole in the end and two in the sides, she fashioned a garment for herself and came smiling back to them, resembling a potato sack with hair and feet and hands.
Carefully they worked their way down the sides of the villa, dropping down the three balconies and then clambering down the buttress they had scaled the night before. Cheyenne gave a signal to Clint to halt, and the islander crept out into the garden. Clint was ready when the dog rounded the villa and came loping toward Cheyenne, who froze in place. When the dog was within range, Clint let fire with another of the drugged projectiles, felling the ferocious animal the way they had the others, without any noise.
Then he and Katrina joined Cheyenne, and the three of them raced down the hills of the estate, not once pausing to look back. Panting with their exertions, they made their way along the fence, looking for the breaks they had sealed over when entering the closed world of the syndicate.
Clint heard it first, but it only took a split-second for the other two to stop in their tracks. From somewhere came the sound of an engine. They ducked into the brush near the fence, and then Clint and Cheyenne saw it at the same time the jeep coming along the fence toward them. The driver was standing almost erect in his seat, searching the terrain his vehicle was bouncing over. In the passenger seat there was another fierce-looking dog, growling low in its throat. Clint could see its fangs bared to the moonlight. He took the knife out of the knapsack and laid the kit on the ground. Cheyenne had disappeared through the brush, and Clint knew in advance how it would be.
When the jeep rolled to a few feet of where they crouched, the dog started barking violently. The machine ground to a halt, and the driver leaped out of it, the blued metal of a deadly-looking pistol in his hand.
No sooner had he hit the ground, though, when Clint sprung from behind him, out of the brush. It was an old exercise, and he followed it through with precise instinct, crooking one arm around the man's neck and plunging the other arm, with its silent steel blade, into his back. The man gurgled and contorted in Clint's embrace as he twisted the knife home, and then went limp in his arms.
All this had taken only a couple of seconds, but already the dog was on Clint, snarling and trying to sink its sabre-like fangs into Clint's throat. But then, out of the dark brush, came the islander. This time there were no projectiles and no drugs. Seizing the confused and vicious animal by the scruff of his neck and a hind leg, Cheyenne raised its entire furious bulk into mid-air and then brought his burden down against the side of the jeep.
There was an awful cracking sound, and Clint heard a little cry as Katrina finally gave vent to her feelings. But when Cheyenne dropped the dog on the ground, it was all over. The dog's paws dug feebly at the turf as its twisted, broken body writhed its last.
Cheyenne turned away from the scene of carnage and went to work on the fence. In minutes he had applied the tops, and the three of them had cautiously passed between the high-voltage cables. As Cheyenne was repairing the fence, Clint looked toward the villa, which sat like a far-away brooding cancer on the top of the magnificent estate.
Lights were appearing in the windows now, and as he and Katrina waited for the islander to patch over the last evidence of the fence, which merely cutting through would have sounded the villa's alarm system, he knew that the thermite had done its work. Up against the clear night sky, he caught sight of a trail of smoke rising against the brilliant backdrop off the tropical constellations. More lights came on, and the villa seemed to come alive in the night, although from where they were, they could hear nothing.
Instinctively, the enormity of what they had accomplished and what had just taken place swept over Clint. He pulled Katrina to him. Only when he had hugged her to his chest did he feel the shuddering of her body, and realized that she was silently sobbing with the strain of it all.
The smoke became more apparent, and Clint marveled at the work of his companion. For thermite was impossible to extinguish. Foam, chemicals, sand nothing would smother the oxygen-bearing combustible. It would burn until it had consumed itself every last trace of itself in doing so melting through wood and iron and steel, spreading its impossible mischief to whatever it came into contact with.
The fence was repaired. Now there were sounds coming from the villa a scream and distant shouts and the sound of more motor vehicles. "C'mon," urged Cheyenne, even as a set of headlights appeared, coming down along the luxurious grounds of the estate. The trio faded back into the darkness, and with tired but elated bodies, they padded through the thick island jungle, following the slender and obscure thread of a trail that led back to the other half of the schizoid little world of San Dozes.
When they reached Cheyenne's bar, it was almost morning and the sky was already streaked with the first pink and orange hints of the rising sun. Moored to the rickety pier on which Cheyenne's bar was perched was a small launch. Cheyenne called down and two natives appeared, dressed in the simple whites of the island's fishing colony. They stepped into the launch, and in a few seconds, the still of the morning sea was echoing to the putting sounds of the engine.
"Amigo," said Cheyenne as they made their way down to the boat. "When you get back, get far away from the States. Go to Europe, anywhere, but don't be around when your stories start appearing."
"Don't worry," Clint assured him. "I've got it all figured out. I'll be communicating by diplomatic pouch from some never-never land. Maybe an island in the Mediterranean. I've always wanted an island vacation, you know."
"Well, I will be reading the air edition of the New York Times with interest from now on," smiled Cheyenne. "If you really have everything you need on that film of yours, you're going to make a bigger dent in this part of the world than Castro and the Alianza para Progreso put together."
"When I get my Pulitzer money, I'll fly back down we'll fly back down," Clint altered his reply, his arm tightening around Katrina's waist. "And we'll hit that old jug of yours for real."
"It's been good, amigo," said Cheyenne, as Clint and Katrina stepped into the boat. "Take care of yourself and the lady. I will look to see you again when the last of these vermin have disappeared. Buena suerte."
"Buena suerte," called Clint softly, releasing his grip on the islander's arm. "Recuerdate, el perro que no anda no halla el hueso!" he added, as their two-man crew cast off from the pier and the launch's engine dropped down to its working pitch.
"You have learned," called Cheyenne. "Va con Dios!"
"Que puedo decir?" said Clint, standing in the launch as it swung away from the pier. "Thanks. Thanks, amigo," he called, as the pier and the shack and the man who owned them receded in the distance until they were specks against the sun-spotted outline of the island.
The engine purred along as the island itself faded back against the sea, which had been set afire by the morning sun. Then it rose in pitch and the stern of the launch sank into the water, and they were on their way for real.
Making a sort of nest out of a couple of tarpaulins, Clint settled down in the prow of the boat, drawing Katrina down near him. Her eyes were still faintly red and moist from her crying, and she snuggled up against him. The aches began to go out of both their bodies as the boat chunked its way over the rippling Caribbean. Clint drew her closer to him, feeling the warmth of her flowing through her improvised garment and his clothes to his body. His mind spun back to a week or so ago, remembering the total feel and image of her feminine lushness as they romped with frank and loving intimacy.
The two crewmen kept their eyes tactfully averted as Clint turned and kissed the last of her tears away. Katrina opened her mouth to speak, but Clint silenced her with a gentle kiss, brushing his lips to hers. Her sensuous mouth, which had shut in surprise, opened to him as their tongues came together. Clint turned on his side and Katrina nestled more closely to him. He felt the resilient swellings of her body flow against him felt her thighs intertwine with his, establishing an unhurried embrace of security. His nostrils were filled with the musky smell of her bountiful black hair. And all his senses seemed to lock into place, in a coordinated and natural physical response to her presence.
There would be time for the stories they had to tell each other, he thought, as they lay there, being gently rocked against one another by the motions of the launch. All the time in the world, he knew, to explain about mistakes, and assumptions, and fears, and their fantastic adventures.
So he did not let her talk as they cruised throughout the day, heading for one of the larger islands, where the syndicate, which would be fully aroused by now, didn't control the airport with absolute authority. By tomorrow they would be in the States, and a few days after that, where? he wondered. Then he knew.
"What do you want for your wedding?" he asked her quietly, letting the words fall in her delicately sculptured ear, which glowed with the warmth of the tropical sun overhead.
"You," she answered, her arms tightening around him and her head burrowing farther into the crook of his shoulder. "You and you and you."
Clint's heart seemed to dissolve in him. It was all over now the years of anxiety and frustration and heartbreak; of tending to poor Shirley, and living in a precarious, empty, two-dimensional shadow world.
Somehow, against odds which had seemed unbeatable such a short time ago, when the cruise boat had docked at San Dozes, he had won. Won against self-defeat and a twentieth-century conspiracy of darkness. There were problems ahead, like that of finding a newspaper or wire service that would run the stories he would compile for the next few months after the microfilm was developed. But there were open-ended, limitless vistas beyond these small hurdles. The reality of what he was, and what life could be with the beautiful girl who lay by his side, was here to stay.
No more of the two worlds of fighting reality and supporting appearances. No more closed doors or evasions of the truth. . When Clint looked down at Katrina, surmising without being told what her story of the last few days would indicate about her own strength and determination, he knew that his life had changed forever; that there was only one rewarding reality ahead of him; that he had indeed he thought, embracing Katrina more fully to himself in symbolic union just been through the time of his life.