And it had to be a good one, to stop a Senate investigation. But for Vic Brighton it was no serious problem. He was top man at Sparling Drugs, and his job was threatened by the fact that the pills they sold for all the ills of man were nothing more than purple aspirin. So Vic had to drag himself away from the pulsating silken body of his secretary, Dana, and he had to figure a way for the investigators, who were hot on his trail, to be stopped cold. It came in the form of an island. An island in the Bahamas, simmering under a tropical sun ... where loose women would be stocked to satisfy every unnatural desire that depraved and easily-swayed men could conceive. So Vic came to Topaz, and there he discovered passion unlike any he had known, in the body of the woman Isabela, and her fantastically lovely, chaste daughter, Carmina. But when the sex-drunk men and women of the drug industry arrived, they turned Vic's island Eden into a hellhole of sin and degradation, even threatening the purity and love of the gorgeous Carmina!
CHAPTER ONE
Vic Brighton turned off the shower, shook his head to clear his eyes of the water, and before doing anything else reached out for a cigarette and his lighter.
He wasn't ordinarily a nervous type, but this hadn't been an ordinary day. He had been building toward this night for a long time, and now he was going to make it pay off. He dragged hard, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs, but it didn't help very much.
He patted himself dry and slipped into a terry-cloth robe, and then went into the bedroom. Tonight's the night, he said to himself. He selected a blue cord suit from the closet, and a complementing pale blue shirt and maroon tie.
She'd go for that, all right. She'd tell him the blue matched his eyes, and that the maroon went well with his deep tan.
It was important that he look just right for her tonight-important as hell.
Tonight he was going to take her.
Vic couldn't understand why the thought should make him nervous. This wasn't the first time with a girl. Far from it. He'd had the first one when he was sixteen, and that was eight years and uncounted girls away.
Perhaps it had been his approach; that could well be it. He'd had to tell every one of his past girls some lie or other: I love you, I want to marry you, you have sexy eyes, I like the way your rear goes click-click when you walk.
Tonight was different. He'd grown sick of the lies. With Dana now he'd been straightforward, a real boy scout. Not gross, of course; he hadn't said "Look, baby, there's only one thing I want from you-your lily-white body." You could tell a woman that you wanted her without waving a red flag in her face. He'd told it to her like a gentleman, and when she asked for assurance, when she'd asked for love, he'd said, "I can't honestly say I do."
But there was something else too.
Something had happened that past afternoon at Sparling Drugs. Dana, who was personal secretary to Sparling himself, had buzzed him on the intercom. "Still angry?" she asked.
"Not a bit. I was never angry in the first place."
"You weren't exactly all smiles when you left my apartment last night."
"That doesn't mean I was angry."
"What does it mean?" she said.
"You can figure that out for yourself." She paused. "Frustrated?" she asked. He could picture her state of mind when she asked that. She was hopeful.
He didn't answer.
"Well, so was I," she said.
"What'd you buzz me for?"
"For business and for pleasure," she said.
"Business before pleasure. What's up?"
"Sparling wants to see you at eleven tomorrow morning. He says be there or he'll have you shot."
Vic leaned back and looked with a puzzled expression at the mute intercom. Then he said "He's never had me in his office other than our regular Monday afternoon sessions. What does he want?"
"I think he's reserving the pleasure of telling you for himself," Dana answered, "but I can give you a clue. Big pow-wow tomorrow with half a dozen other medicine men-competitors, that is."
"Strange," was all Vic could say.
Dana said "Well, that's the business end of it. Now wouldst thou know my pleasure?"
"Sure," Vic answered, not really giving it any thought.
In solemn tones Dana said "I've gone over what happened last night a thousand times in my mind. And ... Vic ... I'm ready."
Vic looked skeptically at the intercom. "You've said that more than once."
"No, I mean it this time. I can't take this ... this hanging in suspension any longer. I'm going crazy. Vic, you must come over tonight. I'll show you I'm telling the truth."
"We'll see," he said.
"Please."
"Would you like to go dancing first?"
"No. That won't be necessary. Just come over."
"We'll go dancing first. I'll pick you up at eight." He cut her off the intercom.
Vic took his suit off the hanger and stepped into the pants. Then he lit another cigarette and plopped into the chair near his bedroom and began to wonder about what tomorrow held in store for him. It sounded very important. Vic was head public relations advisor to Sparling Drugs. Usually he stayed out of Harold Sparling's hair and vice-versa. Once a week he'd present his ideas, layouts, and so forth to Sparling, and they'd talk the stuff over and be done within an hour. Vic had a free hand from there on in.
The fact of the matter was that Vic didn't really need Sparling's approval at all, only saw him once a week to get token okays. Sparling didn't really understand what Vic was talking about anyway. But he trusted Vic, and that's all that counted. Vic's influence had taken the firm right to the very top of the heap, so why should Sparling question his judgement? When Vic had arrived there three years ago it had been little more than a kidney-pill peddling outfit, with advertising techniques unchanged since the thirties. Employing a few shrewd devices, recent techniques, and instituting a couple of new drugs-reducing drugs, arthritis drugs, a new aspirin, and so forth-Vic had almost single-handedly pushed the sales record up to unbelievable heights.
At any rate, Sparling rarely called Vic in for any unscheduled chit-chats-in fact Vic couldn't remember it or when it had last happened-so tomorrow was shaping up to be what diplomats called an extraordinary session.
But then, one extraordinary session at a time. Dana tonight, Sparling tomorrow. Let's concentrate on the business at hand, Vic said to himself.
The business at hand was Dana. He'd held out and won. He had his integrity and the promise of her body at one and the same time. It made him feel strong. And why shouldn't it? He'd won out over tremendous odds. Not only those she put up against him, but those that he'd had to fight in himself. The physical need in particular. Until Dana, it had been simply a question of selling your integrity to satisfy that need. But that only left him empty, left the need unsatisfied. When he met Dana, he knew he'd have to have more.
He'd known for months that Dana had set her cap for him. You don't have to have very much concrete proof of these things, really. A look or touch that lingers just a moment longer than usual is more than enough to break the ice. Return the gaze or the touch and your future for the next few weeks or months-maybe, though rarely, even years-is irrevocably determined. Past experiences dictate the way it's going to be, and with a few allowances for individual quirks you can pretty well plot your course by dead reckoning.
Vic didn't remember the point at which he and Dana became aware they were involved with each other, but he did recall all the things that led up to it. Foremost, perhaps, was the time when she brought him a number of releases to look over. Rather than place them on his desk or hand them to him, she came around in back of his chair and held them in front of him. It was late August, very warm, and he was in shirtsleeves. She was wearing a tight white blouse, tucked in as tight as possible so that it formed a provocative, rounder triangle from her neck over her breasts and to her waist. It pressed her breasts somewhat flat, but hardly enough to alter the fact that beneath that blouse, straining against it, forcing the V neck open to expose an inviting hint of soft roundness, were two very full, rich, proud breasts.
As she leaned over his chair Vic became aware of their presence. At first they brushed against his back and shoulder. It was probably an accident, he figured. But it then occurred to him that this was like a delicate probe, a gesture, or a question that he could answer or ignore. He chose to ignore it. It was an accident.
Then it happened again, and he knew it was no accident. This time it was no mere flicker of blouse to shirt. This time it was a pressure. As she talked to him about the matter at hand her right breast touched the hairs on his neck and made them stand up. then she took a deep breath so that it expanded against the nape of his neck. He sat back just a little bit so that when she exhaled, it was still firmly against him. As she continued to speak she moved just perceptibly enough to allow the bulge of her blouse to caress his neck and spine.
The purpose of her visit ostensibly filled, she left the room unceremoniously. There was no need to draw-diagrams. She'd made her first offer and it was as generous as modesty permitted. But to somebody who knew what to look for, who was tuned to the same wave length on which she was sending out signals, the terms were very clearly stated. He still had the option to accept them or turn them down. But what man would turn them down?
All he had to do then was get the terms absolutely-clear in his mind. He'd have to erase the last trace of doubt that this little episode was unintentional on Dana's part. That wasn't as easy as it seemed. She wouldn't want to act forward by repeating her suggestive behavior. So that left the responsibility on him to maneuver himself into a position where he was making the offer and she was responding.
He found his chance the next day when he had to go to a floor-to-ceiling card file in the ante-room of Sparling's office, where Dana's desk was. He found her leaning over a file directly below the drawer he .needed. Rather than ask her to move to one side, he said, "pardon me" and stood right behind her, so that his thighs pressed lightly against her well molded buttocks. He felt her quiver, then move back just a shade, just enough to make the contact between them unquestionable. He stood that way until he found his card, and then, murmuring a polite "thank you," he quickly pressed forward against her rear end as he pushed the drawer shut. She held firmly. She knew what he was there for. He withdrew from the room as quickly as she had done the day before.
The first stop, the initial fleeting forays, taken care of, the next step was to work out a more intimate social situation. That's where everything came out in the wash. On a dozen different occasions they'd ended up angry and frustrated-he physically, she emotionally. He would not sacrifice his character for her body; she would not give him her body until he surrendered his character. It went on like that for too long. Then, last night, Vic called it quits and walked out on her.
And today, as he was wondering what new paths to strike out on, she had buzzed him and said "I'm ready for you, Vic."
* * *
The singer at the Arabesque Room of the Hotel DeWitt was a bore. Vic tossed off his drink and rose abruptly.
Dana shrank a little. "Where are you going? She isn't half way through with her routine."
"I know. It's a shame we've stayed this long. Lets go up to your place."
Her eyebrows raised at his directiveness. Up until now he'd been oblique with her. Never demanding, it had been "Do you want to" or "How would you like to" or something else that left the question up to her. But there was no doubt about this arbitrary "Let's." She gazed questioningly at him, not because she didn't understand what he was getting at, but because she wasn't sure she liked what he was suggesting. His meaningful look deeply penetrated any barriers she'd put up. She nodded and said "Sure. Sure, Vic."
He took her arm and escorted her to the car. On the way to her apartment she sat close to him, silently and comprehendingly. He felt the presence of her cotton-clad hip and thigh against his. She's like some docile animal leaning against a hostile one, out of fear, out of need for protection, submissive, resigned, Vic felt. The first move had been made by her, and up until tonight the initiative had been hers, with himself deferring. Tonight it was different. He'd grown tired of allowing her to call the shots. It was getting him nowhere. He'd grown tired of the pretense. He was ready to bring things to a head.
And he knew, as he felt her beside him, passive and expectant, that she was now ready to turn the initiative over to him. Maybe she was tired of the pretense too.
Maybe she was ready to admit how hungry she was for him.
Her apartment was larger than those of most single girls. It had a huge living room, furnished rather unimaginatively in modern style. A lot of teak and foam rubber and brass arranged in a casual way, simple and uncomfortable, sharp and harsh. A glimpse of the bedroom revealed pretty much the same thing, a little pinker and softer (the living room was green).
It all added up to the fact that Dana was an unimaginative girl, one Vic could never get terribly serious about, and one he could even feel sorry for if he wanted to. She'd been born in Brooklyn about twenty-five years ago. Her father was in the auto supply business, and no better than anyone else during the depression. Things started to pick up for him during the war, and by the end of the fifties he was thriving and able to join the suburban movement. Dana tried to put herself forth as a product of suburbia, beautiful, nobody could take that away from her. Her hair was blond and short, not fixed in any particular style, but natural and soft, and very appealing.
Her eyes were green, and while they sparkled healthily like those of any normal American girl, they also revealed the limitations of her spirit. The sparkle was after all only a sparkle, and not a rich glow. Her lips were sensuous and full of promise. But they were lips meant for kissing, not for speaking. All in all Dana was as robust physically as she was shallow emotionally, and the pleasures she promised had more to do with the body than with the heart.
Which was all right for Vic right now. He wanted more than that, of course. But really didn't expect it from her or from any other woman right now.
The moment they entered the place the air was filled with their mutual knowledge of why they were there. She locked the door-he didn't fail to notice that. Neither did he fail to notice her anxious glance into the bedroom to make sure it was straightened up. He knew she would resist him tonight as a matter of course. But her resistance would be a token, she was prepared to be taken by him.
For some reason, as soon as they'd had a drink she felt the need to ask him anyway. He was settled comfortably on the couch. She got up and walked to the window and peered out into the darkness. Without turning around, she said "Vic, what are you going to do to me?"
Vic stood and walked over to where she was standing. He stopped behind her, but didn't touch her. He just stood very close. "Don't you know, really?"
"Yes, I suppose I do. But I want to hear you say it."
"What will that do for you?"
"I want to know how. How will it be?"
He put his hands on her waist and pulled her gently around to him. Their bodies didn't touch. They gazed mutely at each other for a time. Then Vic said "I don't feel I can be very gentle with you."
She dropped her eyes. "I was afraid you'd say that."
"I'm being honest with you now. I haven't been very honest with you up until now, but for some reason I think you should know in advance how it's going to be with us if we go any further than we have. I like you, I even love things about you. But I don't want to marry you, and I very much want to take you to bed."
She winced. "I've known all this. But it's still difficult for me."
"I know," he said. "I'm giving you a chance to get out of it."
"I don't want to get out of it," she said defiantly. "I don't want honesty. I'm going to keep on hoping you'll be gentle with me, and that you love everything about me, and that you're going to take me tenderly, and that you're going to ask me to marry you."
"Don't hold your breath until then."
"I won't," she said, putting her arms around his neck and pulling him down to her lips. They were hot and dry and not as soft as he'd hoped. But they were active and wanting, and when he urged his mouth against them they parted. His tongue jumped at the touch of hers and responded cautiously, flicking the edge of her lips and exploring the sensitive corners of her mouth. Her tongue ventured out and teased his. He held back maddeningly, until she began to wrap her tongue around and pull it in deeper. At last he let himself satisfy the hungry pleading of her mouth.
She jumped when he responded so actively. Her buttocks tightened and pulled her hips involuntarily into his hard body, she gasped and began to breathe faster. Her hips began to sway and grind against his thighs. He could feel the slight bulge of her belly against him, and it aroused his instincts. He knew now how he was going to take her. It would not be a mutual act. No, he could not give himself fully to her. He would arouse her until she was half out of her mind, controlling himself in spite of the growing pressure in his loins. Then he would make his plunge, let her devour the only part of him he would allow this woman to devour.
As their mouths interplayed, they stood before the window locked in each other's arms, but there was no other movement. Now he removed his hands from her waist and dropped them to the hem of her cotton dress, while she took her hands from his neck and pulled away from him-their lips still firmly against each other-just enough to push between their bodies and loosen her belt in order to allow her dress to be slipped off easily over her head. As soon as she'd done this she put her hands out and touched his stomach. He tightened up. Her hands began to wander over his hips and thighs to tug at his belt. It came undone, and a deft twist loosed the button of his pants. She went no further for the moment. She would know when it was time to go further. She put her hands over his buttocks and pressed her nails into them while waiting for it to happen.
He was pulling her dress up over her hips, then over her belly, then up and over the heaving swells of her breasts. She raised her hands above her head, but he stopped short of pulling her dress off, and instead he let rest over the head. She stood there in bra and panties, the dress around her head, utterly helpless, her body tense as a violin string as she wondered what he was about to do.
Without actually touching her flesh, he reached around behind her and undid her brassiere. Her upraised arms caused it to pull up the moment the catch was released, and her breasts expanded in their new freedom. They were a light tan, the coffee-tinted nipples were smooth yet. They quivered in anticipation of the touch of his fingertips or lips. But he held himself back from giving her any of the satisfaction she craved.
His hands dropped down to the elastic of her panties, and she pulled her breath in suddenly as she felt his fingertips hover over her belly. But still he did not touch her. He pulled the elastic down over the swell of her stomach and hips, over the firm buttocks that held themselves in tightly, in anticipation of pleasure or pain.
The pants dropped to the floor and she stepped out of them, utterly naked except for the dress about her head which obscured her vision and prevented her from anticipating what would happen to her. She held herself in like a hostage before a firing squad who wonders when the signal will come and where he will feel the first bullet.
Like an artist he stepped away from her and observed her. It was almost comical how she stood there in front of him, her hands above her head holding her dress around her eyes. He felt contempt for her, and anger. Oh, he could be subtle and tender with her now. He could place a palm lightly over her breast and enfold it until it expanded and filled his hand. Or he could place his mouth over her nipple until it hardened and ripened under the urgings of his tongue. He could run his fingertips over her knees and lightly up the inside of her thighs and massage her tenderly.
But he felt she couldn't appreciate subtlety. She wouldn't understand the nuances of emotion that a man could produce in a woman, the spectrum of feelings that can exist between two fully alive and aware people. No, this subtlety was reserved for another woman, as yet nameless and faceless and without a body, but one who would accept all that he had to offer and offer all he needed to accept in return.
He stood away from her another moment, let his pants drop to the floor, loosened the rest of his clothes. When he was completely stripped he stepped toward her. He put his hands on her shoulders, pressed her down on to the rug. Her legs were apart, her knees up, her back arched and her breasts thrust up, her arms high above her head. He got down on his knees and gazed at her.
"Come on, Vic, come on, quickly. Are you trying to send me through the ceiling?" She pulled the dress over her head and off, and threw it away from her. Then, leaning on her elbows, she looked longingly into Vic's eyes. Reaching towards him with one hand she pulled him down on to her. He fell on her hard and his body struck hers with a suddenness that made her face contort in pain. Then, as he started to move rhythmically against her, the muscles of her face relaxed and a look of bliss came into her eyes. "Oh, Vic, it's better than I ever hoped it could be. Don't stop too soon. Let's be like this as long as we can." Her eyes rolled up and her head fell back, so that her body pushed up harder against him.
Vic held back and proceeded with a deliberateness that made her groan for more, for more-faster-for more-Yet what was reserve in him was total surrender in her, and he became aware of a swelling in her, the slow rising of her body, the lifting of her head as though she were trying to raise herself off the rug. "Oh God, Vic, it's lovely, it's lovely. Now!"
The pace quickened, the beat grew impossible to control. Suddenly her hands went powerfully around his waist, her nails fastened on the flesh of his spine, her lips parted to let her emit a sigh of ecstasy. Three waves in a row passed over her, each more powerful than the last. Then an explosion sent his body into a spasm that corresponded with hers and locked them firmly together.
They were together that way a long, long time, as Vic tried to savor every bit of the pleasure. He knew that for her the pleasure had been powerful but fleeting, and it was for her as if there were no beginning and no end to the act. Just an unbelievable potent middle. For her this was enough. For Vic the act must be in a sense a work of art from the first exchange of glances to the last touch of fingertips as they part for the night. He appreciated this, she was oblivious to it. But he would squeeze the last drop of pleasure from her body, no matter what or how little she was feeling and understanding for herself. And he knew from the muted response of her body that she was feeling little and understanding still less.
CHAPTER TWO
Vic checked his watch and saw that it was time to start out for Sparling's office.
He entered the outer office, where he found Dana sitting at her typewriter, gazing vacantly at her stenographic book. Her eyes had a slight cast and her cheeks a certain looseness. While the change was probably imperceptible to anyone else, Vic was definitely aware of it. She sighted him and straightened up instantly. She looked at him with a great big question mark, the vacancy having fled from her eyes and a graveness and intensity replacing it. Vic was well aware that today, the day after, was more important for her than last night. The question mark in her eyes was preceded by "How do you feel about me this morning?" She said nothing, though, and awaited Vic's judgement.
Vic had no desire to pass judgement on her. It hadn't meant anywhere near as much to him as it had to her. He merely said "You don't stand up very well under dissipation, do you?"
She seemed to color slightly, and tried to manage a smile. "I usually don't dissipate myself quite that much. Why, does it show?"
"You look a little tired, that's all."
"I feel ... I feel a little tired." She still looked at him wonderingly, trying to pry some affirmation or denial out of him. "Vic...."
"Is Sparling ready to see me?"
She recoiled. "Go right in ... sir."
When he entered the oak paneled office of Harold Sparling he found him standing by his bookshelves on the far side of the room. A glass was in his hand, and it was filled with liquor. On a little bar setup in front of him stood four or five apothecary jars, the symbol of the trade, each marked with the Latin equivalent of Scotch, Rye, Gin, and so forth. It was very clever, and everyone thought the idea was another tribute to Sparling's genius.
Vic had had them made up from his own design.
Vic had also urged Sparling, when the company was in the midst of moving to these larger quarters, to put up these floor-to-ceiling bookschelves filled with expensively bound volumes on drug formulas and medicinal compounds, rare books dealing with magic and alchemy, new books describing the latest advances in the drug industry, and of course a specially constructed shelf to hold every issue-from the first to the latest-of the industry's trade magazines.
The impression conveyed by the room was that the man who resided in it was a veritable titan of the drug industry, a man of wisdom and learning, as evidenced by the bookshelves, but yet a man of wit and humor-the liquor decanters-and a man of infinite power-the sweeping rosewood desk with no evidence of Sparling's indulgence in labor of any sort, except for a built-in intercom with a dozen buttons which connected him with the twelve most important executives in the firm.
It was all Vic's idea, and he had played no small part in the actual designing of the room. In a commercial world where symbols and external manifestations meant so much, the man who could put forth the most impressive image traveled the farthest, and Vic had been called upon to help create this image around Sparling.
Some men, when you probe their image, are absolutely worthy of it. Either they really have what it takes, or they've weaved themselves a fantasy so complete that they can't distinguish themselves from their image. Other men are hopelessly and hilariously beneath the image they've had dreamed up for themselves, and they wear the garment as clumsily as an adolescent prince who dons the robes of his father, the king. The men who live up to their image are dangerous because they so shrewdly manipulate human lives and values; the others, the men who don't really know what to do with their image, are possibly more dangerous. They don't appreciate their power, and they can abuse it terribly-In a word, they're stupid.
Harold Sparling was. a stupid man.
Vic's sudden entrance caused him to juggle and nearly drop the decanter of Scotch and the mortar that served as a glass (a pestle, naturally, was the swizzle stick I. "Ah, Victor. Didn't expect you quite so soon. Not at all so soon."
"So I notice," Vic said to the bald, corpulent president, who was kicking a few drops of liquor off his patent leather shoes. "Isn't it a little early in the morning for a drink?"
"Under any other circumstances, I'd say by all means.
Couldn't you knock before bursting in here?"
"Dana said I should just go right in."
Sparling took a long sip of Scotch. "I'll have to speak to that girl. Can I interest you in a snort?" He held out decanter and glass.
"No, thanks."
"I must congratulate you on these things," he said, gesturing towards the bar set. "Get a lot of interesting comments. Just today Petrie-you know, Petrie Pharmaceutical-said he wished he'd thought of them. Petrie. You know, he's not bad at all for a competitor. Sharp young man. Reminds me somewhat...."
"What's up?" Vic said directly. Sparling straightened up.
"What's up? Yes, by all means, let's stop beating around the bush. Victor, how long you been with us? Two years?"
"Three years."
"Three years. You've come a long way in that time."
"So have you," Vic answered, counting on Sparling's dullness to interpret an insult as a compliment. After all, Sparling's progress was a direct result of Vic's influence.
"You mean so has Sparling Drugs."
"That's exactly what I meant," he said wryly. "Why do you want to know?"
"Well, I'm trying to determine whether I can trust you with a piece of confidential information." Sparling was a born diplomat.
"I think you know the answer to that," Vic said, controlling his anger at this man's obtuseness.
"I suppose I do, but there's a lot of money--a lot of money-riding on this information. One can't be too sure about the people one is dealing with."
"One has to take that chance sometimes."
"Yes, I guess one has." He paused and took another swallow of Scotch. It was obvious Sparling's mind was waddling around this ponderous matter, trying to find the best point at which to begin.
Vic offered to help him. "Why the unusual procedure, Sparling? You've called me in here for something other than decanters and data about my tenure here. You've seldom had me in here for any other purpose than the usual one. You're taking a drink before lunch, so you're obviously disturbed about something. You're talking all around something or other and wasting both your time and mine." Vic could get away with this kind of talk because Sparling stood in awe of him. Vic was indispensable to his employer. "So how about it, Sparling?
"You're right, Victor."
"Why don't you tell me, for instance, what the conference was all about this morning. That seems like a good place to begin."
"No, no it isn't. First there's something you ought to know. Maybe you do know it. You're an intelligent young man."
"Thanks. What is it?" Sparling's digressions were maddening.
"As you know, we put out a rather impressive line of drugs aimed at the popular market. Now, since you've been pretty much on the advertising end of this business and not on the, uh, scientific end, you may not be aware of the components of our drugs."
"I can read the labels. I have to know what I'm selling."
"Anyone can read labels. And anyone can print them, too. But I mean the real components."
Vic sighed in exasperation. "I've known about them for years. Anyone with an ounce' of sense knows about them."
Sparling looked startled. "You're exaggerating quite a bit. I can see how you might know about it, being a person of unusual insight, and probably having a lot of friends in the production department, but I greatly doubt if the public at large is aware. How could it be, if it buys so damned much of the stuff?"
"That's something I've never been able to understand," Vic said, making himself comfortable in one of i the straight-backed chairs facing the desk. "But I guess it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt the power of ' promotion."
"Very true. Very true," Sparling said. "Up until now, we've managed to get along very nicely on the of power of our promotion. But recent developments, which you're no doubt familiar with...."
"The statements made a few weeks ago by those congressmen?"
"Yes. Only they're more than statements. They're suggestions that may very well lead to full-scale investigations."
"I see. And if there ever is a full-scale investigation, it might turn the microscope on our anti-histamine and learn that it's nothing more than purple aspirin."
"Or our Loos-Wate and find out that it's 99% celulose.
"And 1% purple aspirin."
"More or less," said Sparling, a little surprised to hear himself talking so openly.
"So as I understand it, the top thieves in the drug business including yourself, gathered together here today to determine a course of action."
"Victor, I've never appreciated your outspokenness."
"Just calling things by their right names."
"Well, if you would call them nice names, they'd still be bad, but they'd sound a lot better."
"That's not the way I do things," Vic said. "And since I have a feeling I know what's coming, I want to make sure we don't mince words."
"All right," said Sparling, pouring himself another glass of Scotch and plumping down into his well-stuffed leather chair, "let's not. Yes, I had some of the big boys in the business over here today, and they're just as worried as I. They wouldn't admit it at first, but they wouldn't have come here if they weren't. I finally said 'Okay, boys, if you're not afraid of a congressional investigation, we might as well adjourn now,' and I raised my gavel. That brought 'em around fast enough. Imagine them trying to make me think they were all safe, and I was crying wolf."
"Then what?"
"We talked it out and decided just who it is that presents a threat to us, and we ended up with three men."
"Representative Wilton of New Jersey, Howard of Wisconsin ... and who else?"
"A man you're not likely to have heard of. Name of Lucas Clayboro. Georgia man."
"Congressman?"
"No, but as influential as anyone in Washington. Big man behind the scenes. Probably the most important figure of all in this little drama. He's been trying to buy into the drug industry, but we've prevented him from getting much of a grip. But now I see what he's getting to. An investigation would undoubtedly injure the industry, send stocks falling. He'd snatch them up and gain a lot of control. He stands to profit from an investigation, and he's been plumping for one."
Vic shook his head. "This is getting interesting. I think I'll have that drink after all." He got up and went to the Rye decanter and mixed hiself a rye and ginger ale. Going back to his seat, he said "Can these boys be bought?"
"Anyone can be bought. It's just a matter of what you can buy them with, and how much of it they want."
"I'll buy that."
"Now there are two ways to influence a man. Positive and negative. Negative, you threaten him. Positive, you bribe him. We're going to do both."
"Not quite so obviously, I gather."
"Right. Negative-we warn them we'll reveal their holding to the public. They're not supposed to have any, you know. Positive-we suggest we'll add substantially to those holdings. Those are basically the techniques, but there'll be others. Clayboro, since he's not a congressman, requires special handling. All in all, it's going to be a delicate task."
"And where do I come in?"
"You're going to set the stage for our finaglings. It'll be your job to provide what you might call a sympathetic climate for us to work in."
"What does that mean, exactly?"
Sparling stood up and went to the window. "We're going to be softening these guys up in one way or another, and by the time we're ready for the big push they'll be well primed. You'll be in charge of the big push. What we have in mind is a sort of convention where we can hit 'em every which way at once."
Vic shook his head. "And you want me to make the arrangements?"
"Yes. But this can't be merely just another convention. In the first place, they bore the hell out of everyone, and, in the second, no self-respecting congressman would allow himself to be seen at one of these shindigs."
"So it has to be fabulous, yet out of the way."
"Right."
"Sounds challenging," Vic said indifferently.
"It'll be the most important assignment you'll ever have." Sparling turned from the window and looked long and directly at Vic. "I don't expect you'll let me down."
Vic stood up and leaned on the desk, returning Sparling's gaze. "Sparling, up until now I've gone along with fraud, which after all is what we've been perpetrating. But this is bribing government officials. I don't know if I want to go that far."
"You have a strange sense of ethics. It's like saying that beating a man is fine, but killing him is against your principles."
"The law recognizes that distinction too," said Vic, "and punishes accordingly. The same goes for what we're talking about. There's a difference between winking a little at corruption and actively promoting it."
Sparling began to breathe faster. The beads of sweat began to run down over his temples in spite of the air conditioning. "Maybe I'm obtuse, but I don't make that kind of distinction, and I won't stand for it from you. A man who permits corruption is just as corrupt a: a man who promotes it. You're in this far, Victor, and all I'm asking you to do is go a little further to protect what we've done so far." Vic said nothing, and Sparling jumped in with a comforting word. "Come on, Vic, this isn't like you. We can settle this thing amicably."
"You mean pacify me with a raise in salary."
"I had a raise in mind. A substantial one."
"It'll have to be more substantial than substantial."
"Do the job right and money will be no problem. I'm working with unlimited funds. Both my own and those of several other companies."
"It's not really a question of money."
"Yes it is," said Sparling ironically, judging Vic's weakness precisely. " Yes it is. I trust you'll have a plan to submit in a day or two." He held the door open. Vic paused before it, and Sparling put a paternal hand on his shoulder. "Take the rest of the day off. Go swimming somewhere. Cool off."
Vic looked contemptuously at Sparling and marched off, slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER THREE
The ceiling of Vic's apartment was blank and white, but from the way he stared at it you might have thought he was studying a complex tapestry.
Actually, life for him had become nothing less than that. Anyone simpler than he would have had no trouble at all understanding what was expected of him and what had to be done. A man like Sparling, for instance. For him it was all very plain. He was threatened, and when you're threatened you fight. You don't think about the ethics of it. You find your enemy's weak spot and you kick him there. If it happens to be his groin, that's tough. If you can't hurt him with a kick, try something else. Butter him up, blackmail him, take away something he loves, give him something he loves. There are ways. If you're simple, like Sparling, just find them.
To Vic it wasn't simple at all. Sure, finding a place for the convention was the easiest part of it, and outfitting the affair spectacularly was as easy as spending money. And money wasn't going to be any problem at all.
No, once he made up his mind to do it, the doing was simple. But making up his mind? Barriers just don't come any larger than that. Okay, when corruption is all around you it's no skin off your nose to be cynical about it. You're not really participating in it. Just not doing anything about it, that's all. And then somebody says "Come on in and join the fun." You raise your hand and tell him you're doing fine just watching. And he says watching isn't doing, and you know he's right. There's no substitute for the real thing. But doing the real thing is more than dipping your footsy in the water. It's a wholesale plunge. And it can be cold, and it can be deep, and there can be consequences you never thought of when you stood around making cynical observations.
You can drown, for instance.
That's corruption. A big swimming pool filled with your favorite liquor. Just keep your head up and sip a little at a time and you find the horror underneath the laughs, and the dark depth beneath the inviting surface.
Still it's your favorite liquor, and you can control yourself.
The liquor for him was money-a hell of a lot of it-add two parts of prestige-a whole industry grateful to him-and power, pitchers and pitchers full of it. How many men would stop after the first drink? Maybe if they thought about the hangover a little more....
A gentle tapping at the door interrupted his thoughts. The taps were tiny, as if made with the nails. It was a woman's knock, and then he remembered he was supposed to take Dana out tonight. He called out "Come in" without moving.
Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Dana's form. She was dressed in a black sheath with a square cut neckline.
The dimness of the room caused the deep curves of her breasts to stand out in vivid, voluptuous relief. She wore no girdle, and that faint swell of her belly that had tantalized him so much the last time heaved gently, rhythmically. Her hair was pinned up high, showing her graceful white neck to its fullest advantage. She stood still waiting for him to invite her further inside, or to say something or even look at her. He did nothing. She looked at the ceiling where his eyes were focused and said "I can think of nicer things to look at."
"I'm looking at nothing," he said coolly. "Anything is nicer than nothing."
"Something is nicer than just anything. Something special is the nicest of all."
"What makes you think you're something special?"
"What makes you think you can pass up a date with me:
"I never said I would. I just said I'd see," he said irritably.
"You didn't say you wouldn't, either. So I took it to mean...."
"Okay, I get the message."
"But I'll leave," she said, turning away.
She hesitated and Vic knew she had no intention of going. "No, stick around. I'm sorry. I forgot all about tonight. A lot on my mind."
"Maybe I can remove some of it. Why don't you ask me to sit down?"
"Of course." He got off his back and sat up. She eased herself into a soft chair opposite him and drew her knees up, circling them with her arms. The hem of her dress dropped from her knees and slid down her thighs to show the tops of hex stockings and an inch above. He looked at her legs, which were gold in their stockings, but cream-colored where the nylon left off. Beyond that was darkness, and all the lines of her limbs pointed to it like railroad tracks that point to a tunnel. A tunnel of love.
"What's up?" she asked.
He told her about Sparling's proposition.
"I kind of figured you'd react that way," was her answer.
"You knew about it?"
"I know everything that goes on in that company. I know things Sparling doesn't, things you don't, things the public doesn't know-and things Congress doesn't know."
"You're pretty valuable."
"And dangerous, don't forget that." The hem of her dress slipped another inch. He could see no panties. He wondered if she had any underwear on at all.
"Why do you say you know I'd react that way?"
"Because you're a complex guy. You see a thousand problems where only one really exists."
"What's the one?"
"The one is 'what's the easiest way to get what I want?' "
"That's your problem. My problem is, 'what do I want?' If I don't know that, then I have a thousand problems."
"What I want right now is a good stiff drink. Will that create any problems?"
He smiled and got to his feet, going to the sideboard across the room. "That's no problem at all. I wish everything was as easy to solve as that. What do you want?"
She put her hands to her head, mockingly. "Decisions, decisions."
"I'm for Scotch."
"I second the motion."
They had their drinks and then another round, and by that time Vic had begun to come to the conclusion that there was virtue in limited intelligence. Life for Dana was black and white. I want or I don't want. Why couldn't he turn himself off and reduce things to that simplicity? Well, he couldn't, but there was no reason he couldn't enjoy the company of someone who could. Especially with two drinks under his belt-and a third being mixed.
Finally she said "Look, let's put all the morality out of the picture for the time being. For me it's a question of where we're going to throw this shindig and how we're going to work it."
"But...."
"No buts. That's it. That's all there is to it."
He sat opposite her and looked at her intently. She was like one of those Hindu cobras. Poisonous, but hypnotic. He wanted desperately to believe that's all there was to it, and he found himself coming under her spell. Her gentle voice was lulling his qualms. Every once in a while she'd shift her body and take his mind further from what was bothering it. Her legs were slightly parted, and she made no effort to close them or pull her dress over her knees. She would lean toward him when making an important point, and the neckline of her dress would fall away. Deeply, but never deeply enough to show the brown buttons of her nipples, whose outlines he could see under the thin fabric. He felt a growing desire to take just one finger and push the top of her dress down an inch, making the tip spring out and come to life over the pressure of that finger.
She knew how to provoke, how to make a man forget and how to make a man know exactly what he wanted.
He shook his head. Things were becoming a little fuzzy. "Okay," he said, "let's play the game your way."
"Now you're talking,' she said, leaning back in the chair and putting her knees together, a gesture he didn't fail to notice. Play the game her way. How could he resist? Everything he had to gain was so concrete, and everything he had to lose so damned vague.
"How do we go about it?"
"Well, the first problem is where, right?"
"Right."
"Well, I have the perfect spot."
"You do?"
"Yes. Do you have an atlas? All these books around here, I'd imagine you must."
He slapped his shirt and pants pockets as if looking for a pack of cigarettes. "I know I had that atlas around somewhere."
"Don't be funny."
"Oh, yes. There it is." He got up and pulled a large, heavy book off the top shelf of his wall-to-wall bookcase. When he plunked it down on the coffee table in front of the couch it made a big cloud of dust. "Where to, Mac?"
"Bahamas, cabby, and step on it." She got up, a little wobbly from the drinks, and came around behind him as he began to leaf through the book of maps. At last he came to one of the Caribbean, with a big insert in the upper left hand corner, labelled "Bahama Islands."
"Why, there's millions of them."
"Not quite, but there are over seven hundred."
"I'll take five, gift wrapped, please."
She put her arms around him, pressing her breasts against his back. She pointed at a speck on the eastern perimeter of the group. "You'll take that one there," she said with an uncertain finger.
Vic put his eyes close to the map. The island was so tiny they couldn't fit the name inside. The tiny letters trailed off into the Atlantic Ocean. "Topaz?"
"Topaz."
"You couldn't get five people on it, let alone a whole convention."
"It's bigger than it looks-a few miles square."
"How the hell did you come up with it?"
"An old sugar daddy I once knew took me there. He almost bought it for me."
"Why didn't you take it?"
"Because you can't wear it to the opera or drive it downtown. Besides, it was pretty shabby."
"Tell me more," he said, closing his eyes and trying to picture the place.
Her arms still around him, she began to flip open the buttons of his shirt as she spoke in a sensual monotone. "Topaz. It's like most of the other islands in the Caribbean, lush and green, very warm, surrounded by emerald green water." She pulled his shirt out of his pants and undid the last button, brushing below his beltline with her hand. "There's a hotel on it," she went on, "the Carib Jewel. In the twenties it flourished, and it had gambling."
Delicately she removed his shirt.
"Please go on," Vic said, quite aware of the double meaning.
"Gladly," she answered, unhitching his belt and buttoning his pants. "When Prohibition was repealed Topaz dried up. The only business closed down, the tourists Stopped coming, and the island went to seed."
She pulled down his zipper and ran an exploratory hand down his stomach. Vic pulled his breath in as her ringers crept downward.
"You must be thinking about Topaz," she admonished.
"It sounds intriguing," he said, loving the touch of her hand, feeling himself responding to it.
"My idea is to repair the place, fix it up to be the swanky hotel it used to be, liquor, gambling, and women."
"Where do we get the women?"
She took her hands off him. He heard a zipper pulled, and suddenly he felt the unbelievably soft sensation of her breasts on his shoulders, pressing his neck as if he were wearing a silk life preserver. He moved his head from one side to the other, pushing his cheeks into the warm flesh, touching their rising, hardening tips with the corners of his mouth. Her voice was fading as she lost interest in Topaz and replaced it with thoughts of another kind. "The islands are studded with brothels. We'll import them. Vic...?"
"Yes?"
He whirled around to his left, engulfing the out-thrust breast with a mouth moist and hungry.
Her head was thrust back, her mouth open and panting, her eyes glazed, all recognition of everything but Vic's lips faded from their expression. She offered her other breast. "Kiss me harder."
He responded and her body quivered as though hit by lightning. She pulled her dress down and off. Vic kicked off his pants and drew himself up to her. Her arms circled him, pulling him as close and tight against her as two humans can be. "Oh, she sobbed, tears of pleasure springing into her eyes. "Oh, oh, oh" she moaned in rhythm to the drive of his body, each "oh" coming louder and faster than the last, until the last one was sharp and fierce. She convulsed and pulled him so hard against her he thought they would weld together. For Vic the moment was just as explosive. He hugged her to him with all his strength, and they lay wrapped in each other's arms, squirming, twisting and sighing until there was no more feeling to be squeezed from the experience.
After a long time Vic said, half to himself, "So this is what it's like to forget your identity."
"Easy, isn't it?" she whispered, understanding him perfectly.
Vic said nothing.
CHAPTER FOUR
Topaz Vic stood on what remained of the dock and surveyed the island. Off to his left, running several hundred yards and then cutting in and out of sight, lay a beach of pinkish brown sand. Funny birds with long legs and thin, sharp beaks pecked at the flotsam at the water's edge, throwing their heads back whenever they caught something. There was no beach on the other side of him. The tropical growth, a tangle of big-leafed plants, palms, Eucalyptus trees, and huge ferns, ran right down to the water line. He could see brightly marked fish close to the surface, looking for bugs which darted out of the trees and swooped down close to the surface. Some of the insects were so big they made him wonder if it wasn't they that were hunting the fish.
Directly in front of him a path, once neatly paved with flagstone but now a mess of broken slate, sand and plants, led away from the dock and off to the left uphill. As far as he could make out when he was approaching it, the island was a mound, and the hotel was built at the peak of it. From where he now stood he could see the gables of the Carib Jewel. They were grey with an occasional streak of whitewash, and a couple of shutters hung from the windows at crazy angles.
Vic shook his head solemnly. He'd always heard people call these places God-forsaken, but the term never made any sense to him until today. A trickle of sweat ran down his. spine, and an immense fly took a swipe at his ear. He grimaced.
There was a tug at his arm. It was the gaunt colored islander who'd taken him in his launch from Cat Island. "You want he to take up your bag, Mistah?" The man gestured to his son, a pint-sized boy wearing little better than a loincloth. The boy had done all the work while his father made helpful comments.
"No. But can you hang around here for a few hours? If I stay I want you to carry a cable message back to Cat Island. If I don't you can carry me back."
"Okay. But that ten dollah more for waiting, ten dollah more for carry you back to Cat Island."
Vic turned to him, his temper short already. "You know, you have a hell of a nerve, charging ten bucks at the drop of a hat."
"Yes, boss."
"I could buy that dinghy of yours for five dollars."
"Twenty-five dollah and she yours."
Vic shrugged his shoulders. What the hell, it wasn't his money anyway. He had unlimited funds to work with. "Okay, stick around."
"For ten dollah?"
"Yeah, yeah." He picked his bag up and walked off the dock, heading up the path to the hotel. Behind him he could hear the boy and his father chuckling. He knew they were laughing at him. If he weren't so damned uncomfortable he might laugh himself. Why couldn't he have decided on Miami Beach or Nassau or any civilized spot in this big ocean? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad when he got to the hotel. Or if it was, maybe it could be fixed up. Or if it was really bad, there was nothing he had to stick with this place. He was just exploring the possibilities, that's all.
The undergrowth ahead of him finally cleared and he trudged out into the open. Before him rose the hotel, shabby and dingy, but sturdy for all the details that stood out as needing repair. It was larger than he thought it would be, and asymmetrical, with a tall main house on one side and a long wing on the other. The whole thing was up on concrete piers to protect it from sloshing into the mud in the rainy season. Leading up to the main entrance was a wooden stairway which had collapsed on one end, looking more like a ramp than anything else.
Inside things were no better. It was no cleaner, no cooler, no neater. There was a strange odor about it, like dead damp flowers. There was nobody around.
"Anybody home?" he called out, the sound of his voice echoing about the place as if he were yelling into an oil drum.
For a few moments there was no sound, but just as he was ready to call again there was a creak upstairs where a railed corridor ran around the second floor. A door opened.
The grey-haired man looked at him as if he were a polar bear. "Y ... Yes?"
"Come on down. I'd like to speak to somebody about accommodations."
"Certainly, certainly. Mais un moment," he said in a hoarse French accent. "Let me put some clothes on, hein?"
"Sure, go right ahead."
The man ducked into the room, and as he did so Vic caught a glimpse of what looked like a naked woman's body, rich brown and rather heavy. The door closed and he could hear a scurrying around upstairs, the sound made by a couple of people caught with their pants down. There was a vigorous whispering, verging at one point on an argument. Then the door opened and the man walked out, calmly and with dignity, looking at ease, but betraying complete surprise at anyone's being there.
He was a fat man. A very fat man with a many-layered face and the semblance of a neck. His skin was pale and yellow, something Vic didn't expect from somebody who lived on a Caribbean island. He was practically bald, but a tuft of white hair ran around the back of his head from ear to ear, and his eyebrows were like white caterpillars, constantly undulating, raising, lowering, coming together, flying apart. They seemed to have an appropriate gesture for everything he said, like someone signaling you with flags even though you can hear his voice. His eyes were porcine, with the expression of a man who enjoys his pleasures deeply, in traditional fat-man style, but who can slash like a boar when deprived of them.
He came whizzing up to Vic and bowed. "You'll pardon my delay, Monsieur. I did not expect anyone, and I was ... well, indisposed." The caterpillar brows lifted up sensually, the eyes flashed a man-to-man signal to Vic, who got the message easily enough but chose to ignore it. "We rarely have the pleasure of visitors, I'm sorry to say."
"It's posible you may know the pleasure soon," Vic said.
"So? That would delight us no end." He grinned the grin of a reprobate who'd probably known no end of delight.
"I'd like to have a look around."
"Of course. But I'm not sure I understand the purpose of your visit."
You re not the only one, Vic said to himself. "I represent a group of businessmen who are looking for a place to spend their vacation. The place must be out of the way and not too expensive."
"You have certainly come to the right place," the fat man said wryly. He put a hand to his chin, putting a great deal of thought into his next question. He must have decided his best approach was honesty. "But Monsieur, to be truthful, we have not entertained guests-in large numbers, that is-for some time. Our accommodations are ... how shall I say?"
The burden of truth must have been too much for a guy who had had very little practice carrying it. Vic removed it from his shoulders. "These men have money. If they get a favorable report from me they might be willing to invest some here to fill in any accommodations you can't provide." Vic wondered whether it were wise to give his hand away so early in the game, but then figured it would be best to impress the man now, then carry the promise of money in front of his nose like a carrot.
All he said was "Ah," but his brows spoke eloquently, shooting up like a marionette's. Then he added: "I take it privacy is important, otherwise you would have chosen one of the larger islands."
"That's very shrewd of you," Vic said quietly, "but I think you'll be a lot shrewder if you keep your speculations to yourself for the time being."
"Of course, of course," he said, quite patronizingly. Veering away from the dangerous ground he'd just stepped on, he said: "I am Antoine Theodore, owner of the island and proprietor of this hotel."
"Victor Brighton. Now, how about showing me around?"
"I'd like to very much, but the fact is, I am too large to make my way with any speed inside the hotel, and I detest the heat, so I wouldn't wish to go outside. As you can see," he said, patting his belly with both hands, "I'm the type of fellow who takes his pleasures sedentarily-or prone." He leered. "And confidentially, even those pleasures are now denied me. My woman is growing old. She doesn't do the tricks she once did." He sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
Vic reflected that it probably wasn't the woman who was losing her potency, but Antoine Theodore. He wondered why Theodore was letting him in on this intimate business. Then it struck him the man might be extending an invitation for Vic to try his hand at this woman. If he liked her he might be compelled more easily to stay. He liked to think sex wouldn't have that weakening effect on him. He'd make his mind up his way, however many times he was seduced by somebody trying to get him to do things another way. Then he thought of that night with Dana and realized sex had the effect of helping him make his mind up-not always in the most favorable way.
His suspicions were just about confirmed when he saw Theodore's "woman" coming down the stairs.
It was a privilige to behold anything as profoundly beautiful. Her skin was a tawny brown with the rich consistency of cocoa, and it flowed and rippled over her frame with each step she took. She was not light and lithe, but she was not plump either. She was best described as full,, tall, and wholesome. Her eyes were almond-shaped and colored, her expression one of serenity, the kind that can go either way-to fierce hatred or fierce love. Her hair was long and mahogany black, and she wore it with no embellishments. It came down over her shoulders and fanned out over the front of the formless sack dress, grey and soiled, which was all that stood between the world and a body of deep, graceful curves and swells. Her breasts jogged easily beneath the dress as she walked, glorious fruit shaking in a mild breeze.
He held his breath as she reached the bottom'step and walked, almost glided, towards him. He felt Theodore's eyes scrutinizing his face for a reaction. "You should have seen her before chilbirth," Theodore murmured. "My daughter Carmina ruined her figure."
Vic turned a disdainful eye on Theodore. He liked him less every time he opened that snout to speak.
She stopped in front of the man and nodded a greeting to Vic.
"Isabela, I should like you to meet Mr. Victor Brighton. Mr. Brighton, my ... uh, wife Isabela."
"How nice of you to visit us, Mr. Brighton," she said in a calmly modulated voice. "Will you be staying for long?"
Vic opened his mouth to speak but Theodore cut him off. "Mr. Brighton is, how would you say it, a scout. He has been thinking of Topaz as a spot for his associates to vacation. I don't think he has to look any further, do you, Isabela?"
"It is a lovely spot, but sadly run down." She said "sodly," giving a hint of French to her Caribbean diction.
Theodore was checked by her frankness and hastened to say to her "Mr. Brighton has offered to help us put the place into order."
It was a very unsubtle reprimand, and she knew she'd get hell from Theodore if she was too outspoken. She merely answered "Then I think he'll find it suitable."
"Of course he will," Theodore said, taking a carefree tone, "and I'd like you to take him around Topaz and show him the high spots." There was the hint of a sensual suggestion in his voice, augmented by a furtive role of the white eyebrows .
"Perhaps Mr. Brighton will wish to get settled first."
"No," said Vic, raising his hand, "the sooner I see the place the better I'll like it."
"Fine," Antoine Theodore said. "I'll just take your bag and put it somewhere safe."
"Why don't you leave it where it is?" Vic answered pointedly.
"Suit yourself, Mr. Brighton,' the fat man said, getting the point quite clearly. "Suppose, Isabela, you start with the island proper, while I do my best to put the hotel into order. There isn't much I can do, fat slug that I am."
"Get Carmina to help you."
"If I can find her. The lazy wench is never around when I need her."
"That is to her credit as far as you're concerned," Isabela said, taking Vic by the arm and ushering him past the fretting bulk of her "husband."
"Suppose we start with the garden. There is a path leading away from it which goes out to the western shore, which is my favorite part of the island."
"Isabela," Theodore called. "May I have one word with you ... about Mr. Brighton's room."
Isabela walked back to him and there followed an intense exchange of whispers. Vic couldn't understand a word of the strange language, which was a bastard combination of French, Dutch, broken English and the peculiar Caribbean dialect. Still he knew that Theodore was instructing her about her behavior, and he doubted if fat boy was taking the position of a worried father warning his virgin daughter about her first date. He doubted it very much. Isabela answered him with an infuriating calmness, and Theodore's face grew red, his eyebrows jumping around like drops of water in a hot pan, his whispers hissing and angry.
Vic looked around the hotel, trying to appear innocent. His eyes roved to the balcony, and suddenly he threw his head back. There was a girl up there peering down at him. Her body was concealed behind a corner, but her eyes were the loveliest he had ever seen, large like a baby's, and full of curiosity. Her lips were pouted in wonder, her little flat nose wrinkled like a suspicious puppy's. As soon as his eyes found hers she darted back and disappeared from sight.
He stood entranced for a long moment until he felt a gentle hand on his arm. "Mr. Brighton, didn't you hear me?"
"Yes, I guess so. Who...?"
"You must have seen my daughter Carmina."
"She's an angel, if you don't mind my saying so."
"I don't mind at all. She's a lovely girl."
"But kind of shy."
"She hasn't been in the company of many people. Her life here has been rather sheltered. Shall we go?" She urged him firmly towards the entrance.
"Are you trying to protect her?" Vic asked as they stepped gingerly down the broken stairway.
"I can't protect her, but I can guide her. She is innocent and some day she will know pain and evil. I can't save her from them, but I can prepare her."
Vic felt if wisest to drop the subject for the moment and they walked in silence for a little while. She took him around the wing of the hotel, mentioning that it held twenty-five couples, and on to a large garden behind the wing. It was quite weedy and unkempt, but here and there he could make out some remnant of a pattern, here and there a square of herbs, over there a circle containing a purple blossom with tongues of bright yellow aspiring from their centers. "This garden was once my pride. I managed it the way a beautiful woman worries over every strand of hair."
That was all she said. The brevity of it disturbed him, as did the automatic, uncaring tone with which she spoke it. When, as they emerged from the garden, she said dully "It is the way to the west beach," Vic stopped, hands on hips, and looked at her impatiently.
"This is isn't giving you much pleasure, is it?"
"I'm not here for pleasure. It is my duty to show you the island."
"Who said so?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"And what else is it your duty to do?"
"I certainly don't know what you mean," she said shrewdly. "Shall we go on?"
They pushed through a path, dark with low hanging flat leaves, vines and sharply coiled tendrils. At last they came out on a bluff overlooking a magnificent cove. A golden beach, tinged slightly with pink, swept in a gentle curve away from them. The ocean was quiet, with only a few breakers of any size landing on the sand. Vic sucked in his breath. "It's fabulous. Let's go down."
He took her hand and led her down the slope to the beach. It was steep and they had to lean backwards and plant their heels firmly in the sand to prevent themselves from rushing headlong and out of control. Isabela was sure-footed and never lost the dignity of carriage which had impressed him from the moment he saw her. He wasn't quite so nimble, and fell on his back twice from leaning too far uphil. She helped him up, and he felt ashamed, but he also liked the feeling of her muscular arms pulling him to his feet, and especially the feeling of her large breasts against his back as she put him upright. She was not coy about them like American women. They were parts of her body, not special organs to be protected at all costs. If they happened to contact you accidentally there was no embarrassment, no giggle, no blush. To her they had their function-for giving sexual pleasure or feeding her young. At all other times they were neutral.
He wondered what they would be like when aroused.
They reached the sand, a little breathless, and after trudging through the soft sand to the center of the cove, at the foot of the bluff where they'd been standing a few moments ago, Vic plumped himself down. Isabela lowered herself gracefully to the sand, and for a long time they sat silently, hands around their knees, watching the emerald water drift in and brush the shore.
Finally he spoke. "Tell me about yourself and Antoine Theodore."
She shrugged her shoulders. "There is not much to tell." She pronounced it "Dere."
"Long ago I was a whore in an expensive brothel on one of the big islands. Antoine had me one night. He was very rich. Make his money smuggling rum into the U. S. He likes the way I make love and buys me, brings me here. This place was very beautiful then." She loked wistfully at the cloudless blue sky.
"Go on."
"Business was very good. Lots of rich people come down, gamble, drink, make love to the girls he brought in. Important customers come down. When they not sure they want to pay his prices for rum he gives them to me for a night. Then they pay his prices."
He spoke matter-of-factly. "You talk about making love as if it has no meaning to you."
She frowned. "When making love is a job it has no meaning. I make all the hot sounds and twist around and roll my eyes because they like it. But in my heart-and in the other place-I feel nothing. Once...."
Vic turned to her. Her eyes were vacant as if she had absented herself from him and was traveling back to another time. "Once...." he prompted her.
"Once there was a man, a man of great strength, but a gentle man too, and a man of wisdom and love. That man, he understood what I wanted."
"You loved him."
"Yes. He opened me up like a flower."
"What happened to him?" She set her jaw. "Antoine killed him." Vic grimaced. "I'm sorry."
"But he left something with me, and I still have it, Antoine knows I will slit my throat if he tries to take it away from me."
"What is that?"
"Carmina."
"Carmina. The girl."
"My daughter."
Well, Vic thought, at least one part of the mystery of that girl he'd seen at the hotel was cleared up-her beauty. It just didn't seen likely that Theodore's offspring could be possessed of such delicacy. "From the little I saw of her I thought she was very lovely."
"I hope you will continue to see little of her."
He felt a twinge of anger. "You don't trust me."
"I have never trusted men."
"I don't think I'm like many other men."
"J have heard that from too many of them."
"You'll just have to take my word for it."
She uttered a bitter laugh.
They sat quietly for a time, and then Vic said "Antoine told you to make love to me, didn't he?"
"He has a lot to gain from you."
Vic looked into her dark eyes. There was an emotion in them, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. There was tiredness, as if she had been called on too many times to make meaningless love and knew it was getting harder to fake meaning. There was fear of Antoine's wrath if she didn't perform the way he wanted her to. There was distrust of Vic, and yet there was the seed of a desire to trust him, as though her innocent faith in men had not been completely obliterated by countless scoundrels who'd asked her to believe in them and then betrayed that belief. Vic said "I'd like very much to make love to you."
She didn't flinch, but merely said "You know you can have me."
"But I won't have you on Antoine Theodore's terms. I want to enjoy you, but I want you to enjoy me too. If you're going to put on an act, I'd rather forget it."
"If you are the same as all the other men, I will know it."
"I know you will. I'm not afraid."
She took a deep breath and peered deeply into Vic's eyes. She was making a decision. Would she give him a chance?
Vic said "And if you're treating me like you treated the other men, putting on an act, I'll know it."
"If you can tell, then you are a good man."
"I say I can tell."
She leaned back on her hands. "Then take off my dress."
She lifted her body as he took the hem of her dress and slid it up her thighs. Her legs were strong and firm, with tight sheaths of muscles stretching from her hips to her knees. He ran a hand tentatively over them and they quivered. She moved them slightly and said "I have been asleep many years. Wake me up."
He brushed his finger tips along the legs and felt the muscles grow tense and sensitive to his touch. When he came to their juncture he skipped over it, as if to say there would be time for that, he would come back to it. But now he wanted to know the rest of her, know the way she was built, know what she liked and didn't like, where she was tender and where she was hard, what gave her pleasure and what did not, what made her sigh, what made her gasp, what made her wince, what made her cry.
She lifted her bottom and he pulled the dress up to her stomach. "Turn over," he said, and she did as she was asked. Her buttocks were large, but without a trace of fat. He laid a gentle hand on them and caressed them. They pulled in defensively for a second, then relaxed as his hand gave her the assurance of tenderness.
She looked over her shoulder at him and he smiled. She managed to smile too, and then put her head on her arms and closed her eyes.
Again she raised her body to allow him to slip the dress up, this time over her breasts and off. She lay on her stomach completely naked now, and he began to run his hands softly over her sleek back and buttocks, up her graceful neck, pushing the long black hair aside. Her neck was especially sensitive. Her head would roll up towards his hand when he touched her there. He leaned over and kissed her at the base of it.
Her skin was coming alive, twitching to the touch of his tongue and the fingers that roamed over her back. She rolled slightly to one side, leaving a space between the sand and her breasts and stomach. He placed his hand, palm up, on the sand under her so that the barest tip of her breast touched it. Her breast was a firm cone, a pinkish tan almost exactly the color of the sand beneath her. The tip of the cone was a chocolate brown, smooth as marble. It semed to have a life of its own as his hand, barely touching it, tantalized and provoked it. His fingers closed over the firm flesh and she breathed deeply, letting the breast expand into his hand and fill every pore of it.
With his other hand he undid his shirt and pants and undressed himself. When he was totally unclothed he rolled her on her back. She put her knees up, put her arms out on the warm sand. She was the very picture of the submitting woman, but he knew she would not submit the way a frightened, beaten animal does, but rather as a woman who knows that her place is on her back, and that the pleasure she bestows will be from a passive position. Vic thought of the many American women he had known who felt that position to be a humiliating one. For them it was a sign of defeat to end up on their backs, helpless beneath the conquering male. But for Isabela there was no conquest, no domination, no victory. This was where she belonged.
He lay beside her and pressed his mouth against hers. His hands, by no means passive, were exploring the crests of her luxurious breasts, fondling them, sliding over the sweet bulge of her stomach and over the thighs. Her breath began to come quickly as the spirit which had been asleep for so long began to stir and stretch and become aware of itself again.
Inside Vic too there was a stirring, but it was something more than the usual male urge he felt with a woman. There seemed to be something more at stake here, something touching a part of him other than his sexuality. It was sex plus, but what the plus was he wasn't sure. Because he had never felt the plus part of it before. There was a throbbing in his heart and brain as well as in his flesh, and the throbbing grew stronger with every pulsebeat. There was a throbbing within her too, as if her body were moving to some primitive drum beat. It infected both of them, gripping them in an emotion stronger than the physical.
It grew unbearable. Her eyes were wide and imploring, her mouth open and gasping not only for air but for satisfaction, her body swelling with each breath. Her breasts expanded and contracted furiously. She pulled him close to her, putting her hands on his buttocks and squeezing them rhythmically. Pure sensation caused her to emit a low moan of pleasure....
Their bodies were in perfect harmony, something Vic had never known before, and something Isabela had known but rarely. The rhythm increased but never grew frantic, each beat seemed to engulg them deeper and deeper into knowldege of each other's bodies and souls.
Then suddenly the rhythm stopped and they seemed suspended in the middle of a bright and silent universe. Their hearts stopped, their lungs ceased, and for a moment everything lost its existence.
Then came a surge of feeling so deep it threatened to dash them to pieces in each other's arms. They were raised up and held at the pinnacle of creation, then dropped to its base, love between hearts, love between souls, love between total man and total woman.
And then there was peace and silence, save the lapping of breakers on the shores of Topaz. They slept, she supporting his dead weight, he feeling child-like on the cushion of her breasts.
When they walked back to the hotel there was no point in talking about what had happened. She knew that Vic was more than a self-seeking, self-gratifying man. And he knew just as well that she had not withheld herself from him and had given him, sincerely, the core of herself she had held in reserve for so long. Their mutual taciturnity was that of two people who understand and trust one another. Words could elaborate this but not affect it to any serious degree. Finally they spoke, but about other things.
She asked him what he was doing on Topaz and he told her everything. She said she would do everything she could to help him, but she warned him about Antoine. The man was a fawn when somebody else wielded the power. But once the power devolved on him, he could be tough, vicious-even murderous. "Make sure he does not become too significant," she told him when they leached the hotel, "either to you and your friends, or to himself. Step on him and keep your foot on him and he will do no harm. Li-l him put his foot on you and he will crush you."
"I'll remember that."
They walked into the lobby. The sun was setting and broad shafts of light revealed a lot of dust in the air. Obviously somebody had rushed through the place and cleaned it as quickly as time permitted. It loked a little better, but was still pretty dismal.
Fat Antoine Theodore came wheezing over to them, rubbing his hands and smiling. "I trust you have enjoyed the many things our island has to offer," he said, eyebrows curling expectantly.
"I did," Vic answered, giving no satisfaction to the fat man by indicating just what the source of his enjoyment had been. "And I think we can do something with this place."
Theodore looked significantly at Isabela, thanking her silently for a job well done. "I'm delighted you think so. Suppose we have a drink over it and settle the arrangements. You'll find the rum outstanding."
"Okay. But first I have to cable my associates."
"We have no telegraphic equipment here, I'm afraid."
"I anticipated that. I have a couple of flunkies waiting for me at the dock. They'll carry the message back to Cat Island and have it sent off from there. Only ten dollah."
"Ten dollars? You did not bargain with them."
"Not really. I'm saving my bargaining for you."
CHAPTER FIVE
During the next two weeks Topaz took on the air of carnival. The drug industry had put unlimited funds at Vic's disposal, and rushed in at a moment's notice whatever men and material he needed. He hadn't hesitated to take advantage of the industry's generosity, either. He imported four American engineers, about twenty skilled laborers, and had lumber, paints and other supplies flown in. He brought in several heavy duty generators to step up the electricity-there would be lots of lights, lots of air conditioning, big freezers and refrigerators. No convenience was to be left out.
The island hummed with activity. A constant hammering came from the hotel. A bulldozer roared nearby, clearing a place for a dance area. Several men were sawing lumber down at the dock for a new pier, and from every corner came the babble of ignorant natives brought in to do the heavy work. From somewhere came the sound of a trowel striking slate for a new path leading to the hotel, and from the hotel itself Vic, down at the pier, could hear the whining of a vacuum cleaner, which had been working overtime throughout the dusty hotel.
Vic was applying a final coat of creosote to the new pier. There was a look of anxiety on his face, because things weren't nearly as shipshape as he had hoped, and the yacht was due tomorrow, the yacht carrying three dozen of the top executives in the industry, the big-shots from Washington, and an equal number of girls rounded up from the classy cathouses among the islands.
"Get a move on," he yelled to three natives rowing food supplies into shore from a seaplane. "That stuff'll spoil at the rate you're going. Tobias! You can carry three slabs of slate at a time. You there, get off your tail. I'm not paying you for nothing. Hey Carl, we'll need another log to bolster up this pier."
He stood up and took a handkerchief out of his pocket. He mopped his forehead and neck, cursing. He hadn't been cool in weeks, and he was bone weary. A dozen times he had almost decided to throw the whole thing over, but he knew he'd be ruined forever if he didn't come through for Sparling and his friends. Still the urge grew strong in him to kiss it all goodbye and paddle off to some quiet island and live like a vegetable. He'd throw himself into his work with more vigor than ever, obliterating the doubts and the objections until they came again. When they threatened to possess him he'd get himself soused on Antoine's rum, which was every bit as outstanding as the man had said it would be. It was probably the only thing of any value at all on Topaz, except for Isabela. And her daughter Carmina.
Carmina. Now there was a funny kid . At least once a day he'd look up and there she would be, concealed behind a tree or a building, observing him with those large dark eyes. But when he made a gesture towards her or opened his mouth to say something she'd vanish. Literally vanish. There'd be a rustle and she was gone. He didn't know where she came from and where she. went. He'd been in every room of the hotel looking for her. One of them was extremely neat, with feminine, frilly curtains on the windows and a pink bedspread. But it was deserted otherwise, as though she had packed up and gone off somewhere. He suspected her mother Isabela was hiding her, but he said nothing to Isabela. He knew the woman had good reason to keep her out of the way, especially now, when corruption was but a day's sail away. He didn't want to get involved with the girl, just get to know her a little. Hell, just get to see more of her than those gorgeous eyes.
That afternoon he got his chance.
Everyone else had knocked off and gone up to the hotel. Vic wanted to inspect the area and then take a swim. It was growing cool-at least relatively cool-as the sun sank behind the gables of the hotel. He was hammering a few loose planks down when he heard a stirring from a tall plant near the path. He shifted his eyes just enough to make out the glint of those pretty almond eyes.
He couldn't ignore them, but he knew what would happen if he made a move to recognize the presence of the girl. He went on hammering, racking his brain for a way to bring her out into the open.
As he was attacking a plank near the end of the pier he got an idea. He went close to the edge of the dock, pretending to fix a loose board, lost his footing and fell into the water.
He started to struggle furiously, sending up a great splash and clamor, yelling "help," but not loud enough to attract the attention of anyone up at the hotel. He let himself sink down once, and when he came up he yelled again, weakly. Looking towards the shore he saw her standing on the beach, jumping up and down like a monkey. Her face was contorted with worry. She started to run up the path for help and he let out a cry as if it was his last gasp before going down for good. She ran back to the beach, shaking her hands helplessly, struggling between going for aid and risking his drowning or saving him herself and exposing herself to him for the first time.
Vic took a deep breath and went under, leaving one hand on the water's surface to show her where to find him. It worked. He heard a plunge and a splashing, and in a moment he felt a thin arm around his waist. She tugged at him and tried to pull him to the surface, but he was too heavy for her, so he gave a couple of sneaky kicks and propelled himself upwards.
She grabbed hold of his shirt and started pulling him into shore. She wasn't making much headway, poor little halfpint, and at one point she almost went under herself. He kept helping her with concealed scissor kicks and flapping of hands, and after a noisy struggle they finally landed on the beach. She collapsed beside him, heaving and panting and coughing up water.
It was a dirty trick, but he'd gotten his girl.
He lay very still, waiting for her to catch her breath. When at last she seemed to be rested he let out an agonized moan. She kneeled over him and poked him in the back, probably to see if he was alive, possibly to see what it was like to touch a man. He let another moan go, and he heard her sobbing. She began caressing his forehead, babbling quietly in the island pate:', lamenting her waterlogged hero, who was surely in the last throes of a life filled with misery and woe.
Her sobbing grew unbearable. He opened out eye to let her know that all was not lost.
She let out a gasp, half of joy and half of fear. She was glad he was alive, but now that he was, what was she going to do with him?
Her head was tilted solicitously, he observed through one wet eye. Her little bud-like lips were pouting sadly, and her eyes, deep brown, almost black orbs, were hazy. Her face was so delicate he could crush it between his fingers. Her cheekbones were high, but not prominent. His eye wandered down a lithe, sleek neck and rested on her body, which was covered by a bright red and green floral sarong affair.
It was still damp and clung to her like finely tailored upholstery over an expensive chair. Evidently the girls on these islands didn't believe in underwear. The top of the garment was wrapped tightly over her breasts, which were high and small, but young, firm, and infinitely soft looking as they swelled over the dress. They described two tan arcs of flesh that continued subtly beneath the silk. The faint outlines of her nipples could be seen, now soft and relaxed, through the wet material. Her legs were long and slender, a creamy tan, covered with a fine down that glistened as the last rays of the sun caught the tiny drops of water remaining on her skin.
She was an enchanting creature, a raven-haired angel. She was something that ought not to be touched, but if you are going to touch it you have no choice but to enfold it, engulf it, gather it up and consume it. He couldn't resist opening the other eye to take her beauty in to the fullest extent.
The picture was even lovelier seen through two eyes. She smiled shyly. "What happened?" he muttered groggily.
"You drowned in the water."
He suppressed a smile. "Then I am dead," he moaned, and shut his eyes.
"Oh no," she cried, shaking him. "You are not dead. Only drowned."
"I am not dead but I am drowned," he repeated philosophically.
"Open your eyes."
He opened his eyes.
"I rescued your life."
"I'm grateful, even though I drowned anyway. Who are you'.
"I am Carmina. You are Vic."
"Thanks for telling me. Haven't I seen you around the island?"
"No," she said quickly.
"That's funny. Somebody who looks just like you has been watching me ever since I came to Topaz."
"That is not funny."
"I didn't mean funny, ho ho ho." She laughed timidly.
"Say," Vic said shrewdly, "Isabela has a daughter named Carmina. That wouldn't be you, would it?"
"Yes."
"Yes it wouldn't or yes it would."
"Yes, I am Carmina."
"Oh," he said dully. "But if you're Isabela's daughter, why don't you live in the hotel with her?"
"I do, but not now."
"Why?"
She squirmed a little. "My mother said I should live in another place for a time."
"Then where are you living?" he asked innocently.
She pursed her lips. "I am not permitted to say."
"Oh, you don't have to tell me. Just let me escort you there. Your mother didn't say anything about escorting you there, did she?"
It was a puzzle for her. Her nose wrinkled in wonder. "No," she said hesitantly.
"Good. Will you help me up? I'm very weak from drowning."
She got up daintily and put her hands under his arms. She tugged and gave a little grunt. He put out a hand and she took two of his fingers and polled. He got to his feet laboriously and clasped her hand in his before she could let go. It was small and tender like a child's. She looked apprehensively at him but made no attempt to free herself. She looked up with trust, and again there was that shy smile and the fluttering eyes.
She led him northwards up the beach. The sand was cool and dry, and their feet squeaked as they walked, he taking big steps, she little ones. She remained close to his side, glancing up at him often. It seemed like a new experience for her, walking beside a man this way. She looked like a puppy let off the leash for the first time, staying close to the master and referring to him often for assurance that she was doing the right thing.
He turned to her frequently. There was something in her innocence that made him feel free, more at ease than he had even been in his life. He had no compulsion to do anything in particular except be with her, to walk with squeaky noises,, to smell the clean island air which carried a faint tang of salt and the subtle odor of the tropical flowers that open to the evening coolness, to feel the trusting hand nestled in his, to hear the chirping and gabble of a thousand birds and insects.
After a few minutes they cut in from the shore, over a prim path that went straight for several dozen yards and then veered to the right in the general direction of the hotel, whose lights they could make out through the trees. Ahead of them Vic could see a red glow, as from a fire or a lantern.
At last they came to a clearing, and before them stood a small, neat hut. It was up on stilts like every home in these parts, and it was constructed of local lumber covered with a combination of thatch and old shingles. The red glow came from a lantern hanging from a rafter inside.
They went in. It was quite roomy and pleasant, in spite of the fact that all the furniture was rough-hewn, the ceiling kind of low and the lighting primitive. "Very cozy," he murmured.
"Let me offer you some warm rum. It is very good when you are cold and tired."
"Gladly," he said. She poured the stuff out of a gourd and into a pan sitting on top of a Coleman stove. She pumped up the gas gingerly and lit the stove. The blue glow threw her face into strange relief, and he felt himself in the midst of some primitive ritual. She served him the rum in a coconut shell, and it was very good going down.
She sat in front of him and watched him with fascination, as though each thing he did presented an entirely unique situation for her. Her dark, dark eyes fastened on the cup when he put it to his mouth, on his mouth when he put it down, on his hands when he put them behind his head and stretched back, uttering a sign of deep contentment. "Tell me, is this house only for you?"
"Yes, but sometimes my mother comes here to stay with me."
"Why was it built?"
"Sometimes Antoine gets very drunk. Then he gets very, very crazy. He beats mother if he finds her, but most of the time he cannot get her because she is here. With me. She keeps me here when Antoine is like that. Otherwise...."
"Otherwise?"
"Hs is like an animal. Once he got very, very drunk. Mother was in the garden. He comes to my room and he pulls off all my clothing. I yell and he puts his hand on my mouth. With one hand he closed my mouth, with the other he takes off his clothes. He is very fat. He is very ugly."
Vic said nothing. But his blood began to boil as he thought about Antoine assaulting this girl. "Yes, go on."
"He ran his hand over me and then he got on top of me."
"That filthy pig," Vic murmured, getting out of his seat.
"Where you going?"
"Nowhere. Well, what happened then?"
"He is so very heavy I think the air will all go out of me and never come back. He starts to kiss me and push his tongue into my mouth. I cannot turn away. His tongue goes so deeply I think I will swallow it. His hands are running up and down me. His legs are trying to push mine open."
Tears sprang to her eyes and she threw her hands over her face. Vic encircled her with his arms and murmured soothing words to her. "Did he...?"
"I bit his tongue with all my might. He cries out and I get my hands free. I scratch his shoulders so that the blood soaks my hands. Then I see my mother over him. She has death in her eyes. She raises her fists and like this," she came down with fists together as if carrying a sledgehammer," strikes Antoine on the neck. He cries out again, this time like a bull. He falls off me and gets to his feet. He is puffing and making horrible noises. He swings at her but he misses, and then she puts her foot back, so," she got up and performed an intense pantomime, "and kicks him. Very very hard. In the crotch."
Vic sat down again, smiling and gloating over the triumph.
"Since then he doesn't come near me. But just in case, Mother has this place built, and she sends me here when he is like that."
"Doesn't he know about it?"
"Yes, but it is very hard for him to get here."
"I love you," Vic said, swept up by some unseen and overpowering impulse.
"Yes?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, running his finger tips over her cheeks. "I love you very, very much." She nodded like someone cordially agreeing with a person speaking to her in a foreign language she did not understand. "Do you know what I mean when I say I love you?"
She shook her head vigorously.
"Well, I hope to teach you some day."
She smiled proudly, the way children do when they're told they're going to go on to a new lesson in their textbooks. "Now?" she asked.
"No, my little flower, not now. Now I will say goodnight to you, and you will go to sleep.
She nodded submissively. He touched her lips with his, turned away and walked out of the cottage and into the night. It was a cool night, a starry night, the most beautiful night that had ever covered the troubled little world. It was an innocent night, and Vic was for the moment innocent.
CHAPTER SIX
Innocent last night, corrupt tonight. Such is the I way of the world. As he watched the hot-eyed men and cynical women crowding on the patio, which stood today where Isabela's cherished garden had stood but a few days before, Vic had the premonition of entering a phase of corruption unparallelled in his experience. The air was electric with it. He had brought it about, and he could not stop here. He felt drawn into it, compelled to enter and wallow in it.
Yet at the same time he felt glowing deeply inside of him a thin spark, a spark not only of his own basic honesty, but one of innocence also. It had been ignited the night before by that flame of innocence he had seen in Carmina's eyes. After leaving her he sensed that all the filth, all the mire he was about to indulge in, could not extinguish that spark. It would quiver maybe, it would diminish to a pinpoint, but it would not be put out. Possibly, he thought, the spark must come close to being extinguished before it can burst forth.
Well, he would see.
He felt an arm slip into his, and he turned to see Dana, tall glass in hand which explained the glassy look in her eyes, looking up at him with admiration. "For a man who hated it, you've done a grade A job, darling."
"Oh, I outdid myself on this one."
"No such thing as outdoing yourself," she said slurring her speech a little tipsily. "No such thing. Only little people outdo themselves because everything they do-is so little-and can be outdone. But big people like you and me outdo all the time, don't we darling? Isn't the rum good?"
"It brings out the profound in you. It's so profound I might think it was gibberish if I wasn't one of the big people. Yes, the rum is good."
"Why don't you drink more of it?"
"I just finished my fourth."
"Answer the question, witness." She hugged his arm to her breasts and held it there."
"How about answering some for me. Who's who?"
They looked out over the throng on the hastily-laid stone dance floor and around the bar that had been set up under a palm. "Who's who?" Dana said. "Well, most of the bigshots in drugs you know by sight."
"Yes. I mean the targets."
"The targets. Aren't we belligerent, though. Well," her eyes searched through the mob, "there's Wilton of New Jersey. Bald as an apple. Wearing the red her-mudas and that hideously mismatched orange shirt. See him?"
"Talking to that girl in green that's towering over him?"
"Yes. He's objective number three, the least important. He has no brains and no values. He does what he's told, follows the leader, and listens respectfully to the sound of silver."
"Why is he here if he's unimportant?"
"Who said he's unimportant? He heards a subcommittee on pure food and drug legislation. He can make sure no bills harmful to us go through. As a man he means nothing to us, but his position is everything."
"I see. And which one is Howard, the Wisconsin representative?"
"Not so loud. He's right next to you." Vic looked to his left. A few people away was a rather corpulent man dressed in a plaid cabana suit. He wore glasses which jumped on his nose every few moments as the man twitched the left side of his face.
They strolled out of hearing range. "Such an animal doesn't deserve such a lovely girl as the one he's talking to."
"That's right," Dana replied, appraising the curvaceous redhead giggling over something Howard had just said. "I'm sure she thinks so too, but hers isn't to question why. She's been assigned to him and she's being paid a pretty penny to make sure he gets all the love his mother obviously never gave him."
"What role does he play in our little drama?"
"He's a gopher."
"A gopher?"
"Yes. He enjoys digging for things, facts, dirty laundry, skeletons, scandals. He has a reputation for expose. I don't know why he does it, but he just likes to follow a scent when he has nothing better to do, or when it's election time, or when his constituents are wondering what the hell he's doing in Washington. Once he has the scent he bays like a bloodhound, and he doesn't get off the trail till his prey is up a tree. He's a troublemaker, and lately he's been putting his nose in Sparling's bottles. I think he's a little unhappy with what he smelled."
"That's why his nose is twitching that way."
"I suppose so. I want more rum. It sets me on fire in the right places."
"Don't look at me to extinguish it," he said, moving toward the bar.
"That would he wonderful. How about it? My room is nice and cool, and my body is nice and hot." She pressed against him fully as he picked up two more tall drinks at the bar.
For a second he felt embarrassed to have her making her desire so obvious in public. Then when he looked around he realized that everyone else was doing it too. That's what they were here for, after all. The yacht had left the U. S. loaded with men. It made straight away for the Bahamas, touching one island after another, picking up the choices tarts in the Caribbean. When the boat pulled into Topaz it was no secret what had gone on. It must have been no less than an orgy. Leering men and their harlots had staggered down the gangplank, either drunk or completely dissipated by four days and nights of revelry. Almost everybody was comfortably paired off, and the only reason a few remained free was so that they could horn in on somebody else's man or woman, or even push into a stateroom crowded with three or four naked couples and join in the fun. No holds had been barred, and nobody seemed to mind who had whom.
It was a convention, and conventions are for fun, are they not?
"Well, darling, what about it?" Dana repeated in a whisper.
"Not now. Not yet."
"Then later? You'll come up to my room? I don't have anyone to stay with, like these other lucky people."
"You must be suffering," he said, taking a long sip of the strong punch.
"Yes, I am. As a matter-of-fact I am. I have an itch, Vic. I have an itch for you, and it needs to be scratched." She pressed the full weight of her body against his leg. He could feel the substantial pelvis, the succulent bulge of her stomach, the firm thighs which opened a fraction and closed around his leg. He felt himself getting aroused. The liquor had begun to take its effect, and he could feel a lightening of his senses, especially those that Dana's subtle movements were intended to provoke. "Will you, Vic? Will you come up to my room and take care of my itch? I need you, Vic. I need your strong body on mine." She ran a hand down his shirt and over the front of his pants. "Will you?"
His resistence crumbled. "I'll be there, Dana. And we'll have the time of our lives."
Her eyes rolled when he said it. "Mmm," she murmured. "Let's not wait too long."
A hand fell on Vic's shoulder.
"Well, Victor, I must hand it to you. You've put things into top notch shape. We're off to a fine start. I won't forget it either," Harold Sparling said. Vic turned to him and gave him a half smile. The man was dressed festively, like everybody else. More so, in fact. He had a ridiculous straw hat on, and sandals, besides a pair of flowered shorts and matching shirt. "If things go as well for the rest of the convention as they're going now, you can expect some handsome rewards. We all can, in fact."
"Is everybody getting acquainted?" Vic asker ironically.
"Oh yes, yes. They're getting well acquainted. Even intimate, I should say."
"How are the guests of honor enjoying themselves?"
"Our two Congressmen seem well content. They should be. They're eating of the fruit of the islands. The very choicest fruit. I hate to tell you what I'm paying those women of theirs."
"Come now, Harold," Dana interjected, "money is no problem, is it?"
"Oh no, not at all," he hastened to say. "If it buys the product we want, that is."
Vic looked around the crowd. "Which reminds me. I haven't had Clayboro, objective number one, pointed out to me. Which one is he?"
Sparling craned his stubby neck. "I don't see him around. And that's the way I like it."
"What do you mean?" Vic asked.
"The girl I assigned to him has specific instructions: keep him in bed for a few days. "Clayboro's girl-now there's a talented woman. She's the madam of one of the highest priced houses in the western hemisphere. What she doesn't know about sex just isn't worth learning. And what she's teaching Clayboro is very much worth teaching," he chortled. "Worth it to us, I mean."
"It looks like school is out, Harold," said Dana gesturing to the hotel entrance.
They all looked up at the figure framed in the doorway, beside whom stood a magnificent woman with dark, contemptuous eyes and flaming red hair. The man was tall and spare, and he bore himself with ramrod straightness, yet with casual self-possession. He was dressed, unlike anybody else, in a suit, and it was impeccably tailored. His face was thin and handsome, with a forceful jaw, perceptive eyes and a dark moustache flecked with grey like his hair.
"Now there's the first convincing sign of what we're up against," Vic said, studying this man carefully. "He looks important, which is more than I can say about Messrs. Wilton and Howard."
"Excuse me," Harold Sparling said, rushing away and up the stairs. He ran beaming up to Clayboro and welcomed him in a patronizing and expansive way that reminded Vic of all the hail-fellow-well-met gestures he had ever seen at every convention he'd ever been to. Sparling slapped Clayboro on the back, and Vic was amused to see Clayboro set him back on his heels with-a rather haughty look. Sparling motioned towards Vic and Dana, and Clayboro nodded to them letting a hint of smile extend to the corners of his thin lips, but not beyond. The redhead excused herself and headed towards the bar, and the two men moved down the stairs and over to where Vic and Dana were standing.
Things were beginning to get a little noisy as everybody started feeling his liquor, and the four piece band which had been playing dreamy ballads in one corner of the patio moved in and struck up a tango, and the pace quickened noticeably, the noise grew louder, and the liquor started to run more freely than ever.
Grinning broadly, Sparling put one hand on Vic's shoulder and the other on Clayboro's. "Victor, I'd like you to meet Lucas Clayboro. Lucas, this is Vic Brighton, the man who has been instrumental in the arrangements here. Of course, you know Dana, my trusty girl Friday."
"Don't forget the other days," she laughed.
Clayboro nodded politely to Dana and then turned to Vic. "And very good arrangements they have been, too, Mr. Brighton."
"Call him Vic, said Sparling, trying to impose casualness in the most direct way. Then, vaguely realizing how impertinent it must have sounded, he added "Everyone does."
"I'm glad you're pleased with them," Vic said to Clayboro, ignoring Sparling's obnoxious flamboyance. "We're eager to make your stay a pleasant one. So much so that I hope you won't feel I'm out of order in saying I'm a little surprised at the formality of your dress."
Sparling let out a gasp and a fatuous grin, but looked sharply at Vic.
"I appreciate your concern, uh, Vic." Clayboro replied. "But I'm not at all uncomfortable, really. It's not my custom to go quite so whole hog as some others." Vic looked at Sparling, but the remark was too oblique for him. "I enjoy myself in my own way, even though it may seem a little stuffy to others."
"Oh that's not what he meant at all, Lucas," Sparling blurted out.
"I'm sure it wasn't, Harold," Clayboro said in a tone which any but the most obtuse-namely, Harold Sparling-would understand to be a reproof. "I don't find it good for a man's self-respect to indulge himself to his limits, do you, Harold?"
Before Harold could mutter some platitude, Vic said "That's a sensible attitude, Mr. Clayboro. We were only thinking of your comfort, and if you are comfortable, there's nothing else to be said, isn't that right, Harold?"
Harold nodded vigorously, anxious to get off the rather uncertain ground on which they were standing. He turned to look over at the bar, where Clayboro's girlfriend had attracted a handful of eager males. Knowing that here was a topic which wouldn't cause any controversy, Sparling said "That is a lovely girl you're with, Lucas. Lovely indeed."
All the more reason for Sparling to gape with disbelief when Clayboro answered "I suppose she is."
Vic and Dana exchanged curious glances, and Dana's look indicated Vic had better say something, anything, fast before Sparling came out with a less than helpful comment. "I take it you're not quite as enthusiastic as Harold supposed," he said, figuring the issue should be brought into the open at the earliest moment.
"Oh, it's not that she isn't...." He stopped and looked at Dana, who took the cue and excused herself to get a refill at the bar. "It's not that she isn't a stunning woman and, uh, not experienced in the ways of love."
"I should say not," said Harold Sparling, failing to realize that it was completely useless to follow this tack.
"But let me put it this way, gentlemen. I'm a man in his middle years. I've been married twice, and being a man of means I have riot wanted for any of the finer things in life, like good women. They have all come easy to me, and I have known almost all the kinds there are to know. Felice, the woman you have been so good as to introduce me to, is in many ways an extraordinary one. She is like everything I have ever known in females rolled into one. I don't remember when any one woman has ever wrung so much from my body. You'll excuse me if I talk bluntly."
"Please go right on, Mr. Clayboro."
"Uh, yes, please do," echoed Sparling.
"The point I'm making is that I've known just about all of it. Maybe not to the degree I've known it with Felice, but when you get right down to it, Felice is just another woman, healthy, mature, experienced and all that."
"But something is missing, is that it?" Vic said sympathetically.
"I suppose that's so, Vic. I'm getting on in years a bit, and I guess I'm jaded. You might say I'm looking for an entirely new experience."
A wave of panic spread over Sparling's face.
"Oh, I don't mean men, if that's what you're thinking, Harold. Maybe it's just that I'm beginning to wonder where my youth has gone to, that's all."
"Oh, I understand it very well, Lucas,' said Sparling, showing very little understanding when he suggested
"Maybe there's another woman here who...."
"I don't think that's what Mr. Clayboro is getting at, Harold," Vic said.
"Well now, Vic, I wouldn't say that."
"You mean there's someone you have your eye on, Lucas?" Sparling suggested eagerly. "You only have to say who she is and I'll be all too happy to introduce you to her, you know."
Clayboro looked around the dance floor. "I don't see her here."
"What did she look like," Sparling asked.
"I don't think she was one of our party, Harold. I believe she's a native of Topaz. I didn't see much of her. She was kind of hiding behind a tree when we got off the yacht, watching us with the biggest damn eyes you ever saw."
Vic felt a flood of fear released through his system.
"Now there s what I mean by a new experience. A young, luscious native girl, growing ripe on the vine, a sweet little virgin. I'll bet she could learn to love like Felice, but at the same time I could be like a father to her. That would certainly be nice," he said wistfully.
Vic's heart was thumping madly. He didn't know whether to run or stay, bluff it out, pass it over, mislead him or play it cool. All he knew was Carmina was in the gravest danger at this moment. But he managed to say, with a relaxed air, "Well, Mr. Clayboro, such is the fate of all men entering their prime. They think a young chippy will bring back their youth. But unfortunately it never works out that way. Usually, after a few cutups with plump little teenagers they fly back to the older women, because they're the only ones who can give any satisfaction. I think you know this, too, and you just don't want to accept it."
"I guess you're right, Vic," he said nodding plaintively.
"I wasn't really entertaining it seriously, I suppose."
"So what if you weren't, Lucas," said Sparling with a stubbornness that brought Vic to the verge of clapping his hand over the man's mouth. "No pleasure should be denied you on an excursion like this, should it, Vic?"
"Not if Mr. Clayboro really considers it a pleasure," Vic said, realizing he was fighting a losing battle.
"I wouldn't know if it's a pleasure or not until I've tried it," Clayboro answered.
Vic knew Clayboro was just expressing a whim, something not to be taken seriously. But because Sparling relied on Clayboro's influence the man's whims had to be taken seriously, and Sparling was ready to follow up any caprice Clayboro had. "Vic, you've been on this island a few weeks. Do you know which girl Lucas is talking about?"
He shrugged. "All native girls have big eyes. That's not very much to go by."
"This one was like a little fawn, slim and graceful with long black hair and a young, tender body and, well, those eyes."
"Do you know which one, Vic?" Sparling asked insistently.
"If there's one like that I've never seen her."
"Well suppose, just as a favor to Lucas and myself, you see if you can't find this enchanting little creature and bring her back."
"Oh now Harold, that isn't at all necessary," Clayboro protested. "I was just thinking out loud. I'm perfectly content with the way things are."
"Yes, Harold," Vic put in quickly and sharply, "don't feel it's necessary to call out the national guard every time Lucas expresses a like or dislike. No man likes being catered to quite that much, don't you think so, sir?"
"I quite agree. Harold, I can take care of myself, and you needn't fuss and fret over me." There was something unctuous in Clayboro's voice that came across to Vic as hypocrisy, and it was confirmed when Clayboro reiterated "I suppose it was just a whim and I was thinking out loud." He looked up wistfully, and it was obvious even to the imbecillic Sparling that Clayboro's whim was more than a whim. It was both a threat and a command. "Well," the tall Southerner said, "those drinks look mighty inviting. I think I'll trot over to the bar and pick me up one. And also," he said looking at the crowd around Felice, "go brush the flies away from my sugar. Will you gentlemen join me?"
"Perhaps in a minute," Sparling said.
"Then excuse me, please." And he made his way across the dance floor, which was now filled with about two dozen frenzied couples, stamping away to a loud and rhythmic cha-cha.
As soon as Clayboro was out of hearing range, Sparling turned wrathfully on Vic. "Look, I'm not sure you know what I'm trying to accomplish here, and I certainly don't know what you're trying to do, but in any case let's get one thing straight. I'm running this show, and you're carrying out my orders, and he's calling all the shots. He gets what he wants, whether it's a whim or not, is that understood?"
Vic glared at him, too angry to speak.
"I've poured too damned much money into this thing to have it go awry because the man isn't particularly satisfied with his girlfriend."
"If he's not happy with her do you really think he'll be happy with any woman?"
"He has a notion he will be, and I'm telling you to gratify his notion." Sparling, red in the face, paused a moment to catch his breath. Then, a little more calm, he said "I believe there's a fishing village or something on the south shore, isn't there?"
"A couple of shacks."
"Well, that's where you'll probably find her." Relieved that Sparling was off the trail, Vic Said "I'll go looking for her first thing in the morning."
"You'll go there now."
"Now? Harold, you're crazy."
"I've had entirely too much of your backtalk already. I'll tell Dana what the situation is and she'll go with you."
"You don't trust me, do you?"
"There's too much riding on this to trust anyone." Sparling started to walk away, and then turned back. "Victor."
"Yes," he said, looking up from his drink.
"Find that girl. Don't let me down."
He went over to the bar and spoke to Dana for a minute. She kept looking Vic's way and shaking her head up and down. In a few moments more she was at her side.
"Got your instructions?" he said, disguising his bitterness.
"Yes. Sparling says you kicked up your heels a bit. Don't like the idea of sacrificing a virgin on the altar of the drug business, do you?"
"It seems unnecessary," he said, understating his feelings.
"Not in the light of what we're trying to do here."
"I wasn't looking at things in that light."
A mocking expression of pain came over her face. "Now don't tell me we're going to go through this again. You know, for a while there I thought you were out of the dark forest of doubt. I hope you're not going to get tangled in it again."
"You wouldn't understand," he said, knowing full well how very little she did understand.
They picked up a couple of lanterns and headed over a downhill path south where the shacks were. Vic was in a tricky situation and would have to be very careful. With Dana at his side he would have to ask the natives if a girl answering Carmina's description lived there. If he wasn't specific enough about what she looked like, Dana would get suspicious and would fill in the description with what Sparling had told her. If Vic got too specific on the other hand, the natives would recognize Carmina's description and would give away her hiding place, the cottage in the jungle at the foot of the hill up on the north shore.
Luckily the natives were rather stupid and didn't understand English very well, and Vic did his best to confuse the issue subtly, so that in the end nobody was sure what anybody was talking about. Then Dana calmed everybody down, much to Vic's annoyance, and started slowly from the beginning. The natives got the picture and began going into their shacks and getting out their wives, daughters and sisters. Pretty soon there was a motley array of short, fat, tall, thin, busty, flat-chested, toothy, toothless, giggly sloppy women lined up before them, none of whom even remotely resembled Carmina. This was a bad piece of luck for Vic, who was hoping to find some pretty wench and offer her as a substitute to Clayboro.
As they made their way back to the hotel, Dana said "What's going on?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I think you have a reason for not wanting to find that girl."
"I told you I do. I draw the line at offering up some innocent kid and ruining her for the sake of Lucas Clayboro's fancy. I don't care how much this convention means to anyone. The whole future of the drug industry isn't worth the dignity of that girl's life." And quickly he added "Whoever she may be."
"And you don't know who she is."
"No. Of course not. I haven't seen any such girl, and I've been all over Topaz these last few weeks."
"Okay," she said without too much conviction. "Let's drop it. We'll just have to report the bad news to Sparling. I don't think he'll be very happy about it."
"I don't really give a damn about Harold Sparling's happiness."
They continued in silence for a few more minutes. Finally Dana said "Vic, you haven't forgotten your promise about tonight, have you?"
"I'm sober now."
She stopped walking and faced him. "So am I. But the itch-it hasn't gone away." She put her arms around his waist. "I still need you, Vic."
He looked down at her impatiently.
She pressed very close to him and began rubbing her stomach up and down against him. "I want you to come up to my room, darling. I want us to have the time of our lives, like you said we would. I want to feel your body against me." The motions of her body became more pronounced, more rhythmic, more demanding. Vic stood straight, trying to remain aloof from the suggestions her hips were making. It wasn't easy. She looked up at him with a deep urgency in her eyes, her lips trembling. He felt the aloofness melting in response, his passion aroused by the sensuous grinding of her hips.
She put her arms around his neck and pulled his head down fiercely, opening her lips. He felt his will power going. Her body clung to his and offered itself with ferocious determination. Eagerly her breasts thrust against his chest, making the hairs tingle. Her hands slid down to his buttocks and pulled them in. "Vic," she gasped. "I can't wait. I want you now here!"
She looked around. A few yards away was a little patch of sand. She took him by the hand and led him to it. Then she lifted up her dress, pulled her panties down and kicked them away. Caught up in the violence of her need Vic unbelted his pants and let them drop. She fell to the sand and pulled her dress up to her belly. "Quickly, Vic! quickly!"
He dropped to his knees. She threw her arms around him and crushed him to her with a power he never thought she possessed. "Come on, Vic," she urged. He moved his body and she uttered a groan of ecstasy.
"I said ... we would have ... the time of our lives," he whispered in rhythm to their bodies, "and now ... you're going ... to have it."
"Oh yes, love me, love me, Vic!" Their bodies were locked tight, and they ground against each other with the ferocity of jungle animals struggling for domination, is if the whole earth would shake with their encounter. Dana's eyes rolled with intense lust, her body heaving for air. "My breasts, my breasts," she cried, and he pushed her dress up, plunged his hands under her bra and ripped it off, freeing the full mounds whose tips already were tall and stiff.
He sank his hands into them and she suppressed a scream of joy. Her body arched slowly, her hips gyrated faster and faster. Then she cried "Vic! Vic! Aaaahhhh." Her eyes opened wide and then shut tight. There was a great shudder and a sudden contraction, and then a huge pulsing that engulfed him and forced him to respond.
"Dana, Dana, Dana," he murmured, gripped by a pain so great he thought it would rip him apart. Their bodies met in a searing final caress that united them in overwhelming pain which was not pain. The world seemed to spin around, then go dark. Then the rhythm of their bodies slowly subsided, and at last stopped.
They lay together panting for several minutes, and then sighed as they caught their breath at last. "Oh Vic, that was so good."
He said nothing.
"Vic?"
"What?"
"Will you marry me?"
He got up and put his clothes on. "No," he said in a tone so final that she knew it was futile to question it. She got dressed and they went back to the hotel.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Vic stood outside Harold Sparling's room the next morning, his knuckles poised over the door. He was sure he knew why Sparling had summoned him, but not at all sure how he was going to react to the man, whether to appease him, stand firm, play dumb, or connive. One thing he did know, though, and that was that under no circumstance would he let them get at Carmina. Not, that is, if he had anything to say or do about it. He wondered just what forces he didn't know about were in motion to go around him and get Carmina for themselves.
Well, he'd know soon enough, and he rapped sharply at Harold Sparling's door.
"Just a moment," came his muffled voice, and there was a sound of scurrying. Then "Come in."
Sparling was in bed, naked. Standing in a corner by the window, looking as innocent as circumstances permitted, which wasn't much, was a tall, well built mulatto girl, covered barely by a filmy black negligee. She might as well have been completely nude for all it concealed, and all it revealed was very comforting to the eye at this morning hour. Her breasts were high and tip-tilted, with large dark nipples that held the negligee away from the rest of her front. She smiled sheepishly and fluttered her eyelashes.
"I hope I haven't interrupted a business conference," Vic said.
"Well, we were having an all night chat about the drug industry, weren't we, Inez?" She giggled fatuosly.
"Inez, why don't you step into the bathroom and get dressed? Mr. Brighton and I have something to talk about."
She shook her head and went over to a chair where her clothes were scattered. She stooped over to pick them up, revealing a superb pair of dimpled buttocks, and pranced into the bathroom, giggling again and winking at Vic.
"I suppose you know why I called you in."
I can guess. "You didn't find the girl last night."
"Obviously not," he answered with thinly disguised hostility.
"Did you try?"
"Of course I did. Dana will tell you that."
"Dana has told me quite a bit."
"Dana's lips are better for kissing than they are for keeping confidences."
"I don't know what makes you think she'd keep your confidences. Her allegiance is to me, not you. However, she revealed no confidences because she said you hadn't told her any."
"That's right. There aren't any to tell."
"I'm not so sure about that. She did mention she suspects a few things."
"Good for her."
"Would you mind throwing me my cigarettes? Behind you. Help yourself to one if you like," he said disarmingly.
"Thanks, I will." Vic took one, lit it, and tossed the pack to Sparling, wondering just what this gambit meant. "Dana did some snooping this morning."
"Good for her again."
"She found out that the owners of this place, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore, have a daughter."
Vic dragged deep on the cigarette. "Do tell?"
"Yes. Do you know anything about her?"
"No, but if they were smart they probably shipped her off to another island until we've cleared out."
"I don't know how smart they are. Mr. Theodore seemed rather shrewd, though, in the few moments I spoke with him yesterday."
"Why don't you ask him where his daughter is?" Vic asked, hoping that was exactly what Sparling wouldn't do.
"I wouldn't want him to get suspicious that there are any designs on her," Sparling answered.
Vic suppresed a sigh of relief. So far so good. As long as Sparling didn't know the unscrupulous nature of Antoine Theodore there was hope. "You seem sure she's his daughter."
"One of the natives you'd spoken to came to Dana today and said Carmina-that's the girl's name-answers the description you gave them last night."
Vic proceeded cautiously. "Okay, let's just suppose the Theodores have a daughter, and the daughter answers the description Clayboro gave us. So what?"
"So I repeat. I want her found."
"But dammit, she's not on the island. She's not in the hotel, she's not in the village, there's no place else on the island that's habitable. What am I supposed to do, snap my fingers and have her appear out of thin air?"
Sparling threw the covers off and got out of bed. He shuttled his flabby nakedness over to Vic and confronted him face to face. Vic's face was stolid, Sparling's determined and cruel. "Look here Vic, I'm in no mood for playing around. If Clayboro doesn't get satisfaction this whole thing goes up in smoke, and I don't intend to let that happen. There's too much at stake to let one obstacle the thickness of a girl's virginity hold up the works."
Vic flushed in anger and felt a deep surge of hatred and disgust well up. "I'd like to break your neck, Sparling."
"I don't care what you'd like to do, it's what you're going to do that interests me. Now I don't know what your claim to this girl is, and I don't care. I do know that you know where she is, and that you're protecting her. And this is all I'm going to say: find her or your future-with me or with any drug company in the world-won't be worth a plugged nickel."
The two men glared at each other.
Then Sparling went to his window. "Come here," he said. Vic went to his side. "Look down there. On the patio. I see about a dozen couples boozing it up, kidding around, having a great time. There's Wilton and Howard. Look at them, laughing away. Do you see?"
"Yes. So?"
"Now look over there, in that corner." It was Clayboro, sitting by himself, reading a book. "If that goes on much longer we've lost him. And I repeat, I will not let it happen."
"Sparling, you're' lower than dog dung."
"The girl, Vic. I want that girl no later than tomorrow. Or you've had it."
"I've just about had it anyway," Vic said fiercely, walking out and slamming the door behind him.
He stormed into the lobby, not quite sure of what he was going to do next. Dana spied him, waved and started walking toward him. He turned his back on her deliberately and headed toward the dining room. He went in and looked for Isabela. One of the waiters said she was in the kitchen. He passed through the swinging doors, and over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of Dana, standing hands on hips at the entrance to the dining room, looking more than peeved.
Isabela was preparing dinner, her face set in its usual repose. She hummed a Caribbean lullaby and looked up at Vic with that Mona Lisa smile, so calm and feminine and mysterious. It faded when she saw the anxious look in his eyes. "Something is the matter," she said, drying her hands on her apron.
"Yes. Can you get away?"
"Very."
"It is important?"
She called to the waiter outside and instructed him to finish up the work in the kitchen for her. Then they went out through the screen door and headed for their private spot on the west beach.
They sat in the cove's shelter for a few minutes before speaking. It was always so peaceful here. It was almost sinful to speak anything less than profundities. At last Vic said "I met your daughter and I love her very much."
"I know. She told me."
"And ... does she love me?"
"That is for you to ask her."
"That isn't what I brought you here to talk about." There was a rustling in the trees on the bluff above them. "What was that?"
"Probably just a bird." She put a hand on his. "You seem very troubled."
"I am." He told her of the development with Clayboro.
As he spoke the expression of serenity faded from her face as though a storm cloud had passed over it. When he told her of Sparling's ultimatum her eyes filled with deep distress. "I told her to stay out of sight," she said solemnly.
"She knows nothing of the world. She was curious, she had to see what was going on. It's not her fault. How was she to know she'd take Clayboro's fancy?"
"I have told her many times how corruption feeds on innocence."
"It isn't your fault either. You've done all you can to prepare her. No one could ask for more of a mother. But that doesn't matter now. The problem is, what are we going to do?"
"For me there is no problem," she said with determination. "Why is there one for you? I will not let them have her. Don't you feel the same way?"
Vic looked away from her. "Yes, but for me it isn't so easy. They've threatened to take a lot from me if I don't produce her. They've offered me a lot if I do."
She put her hand on his cheek and made him look at her "The first day you came here you told me you where not like the others, and I believed you. " She searched his eyes. "Now I do not know."
He pounded the sand with his fist. "Godammit, can't you understand what's at stake in this for me?"
She didn't raise her voice, but firmly she said "I understand all too well, Vic, all too well. Men have sold themselves for less than one girl's purity. The decision is yours to make. But let me say that it is not a question of how much you care for her. If you didn't love her at all the burden of this decision would still be as heavy."
Vic searched his mind and knew that what she said was true.
Her expression hardened, like a mother bear's who senses great danger approaching her cub. "And I will tell you this also. If you let them get her, I will be your enemy, and I will kill you."
It didn't come as any surprise to him. He had known from the first that this woman who was capable of profound love was also capable of the profoundest hatred.
He picked himself up and wandered wearily to the water's edge. The sea was more turbulent than the last time he had been here, pounding on the pink sand with a disturbing rumble, splashing muddy surf about his ankles. He stood a long time looking out at the endless ocean, thinking more deeply than he had ever thought before.
It seemed as if all the problems of who he was, what he wanted, why he was here, all the questions of identity and value whose solutions he'd managed to avoid and escape all his life, were now confronting him squarely and demanding that he make up his mind.
Well, what did he want? The rewards were spread out before him like a feast. Sparling was offering him wealth such as few men his age could dream of having. And prestige, because he would be something of a hero if the convention panned out the way the drug industry was counting on it to pan out. Carmina offered her love, like some delicate flower for him to cultivate. It was a love such as he had always cherished most deeply in that part of him that every man reserves for one woman.
Standing in front of each way of life, like standard bearers before opposing armies, were Dana and Isabela. Dana was making her play for his hand in marriage, with all the social status, good times, hot sex-and moral oblivion-that went with it. He had but to relax his grip, turn his back on the things that meant most to him, turn a little valve and shut out the nagging doubts, and she had him.
Isabela's offer was more simple and far less gratifying. It was her respect. But because she was a woman who understood him better than any person ever had, who really knew who he was in the core of him, her respect became tantamount to his self respect.
So much for the plus side of the ledger. On the minus side he had a great, great deal to lose, as if under that banquet table with all the goodies on it was a pack of ferocious dogs, and no mater what he chose he would be snapped at and bitten and possibly devoured by them. A vote for Carmina meant Sparling would break him so thoroughly he's never be able to climb back, even begin to climb back, up the ladder of success. And now he stood near the topmost rung. A vote for Sparling meant the destruction of a girl so beautiful of face, body and soul that the heavens would cry out with the pity of it. It meant he would be hunted forever by Carmina's mother, and even if she never found him his own conscience would hunt him and torture him and do the job for her.
The surf rushed angrily around his feet, and the surge of the ocean corresponded to the pounding in his skull. He closed his eyes and for a moment he felt as if he were a pinpoint grain of sand hammered at by the boiling rage of the universe.
And then he was at peace and knew what he had to do.
He walked back to Isabela, feeling a hundred years older, yet at the same time filled with the tremendous energy of one who at least knew who he was and what course he had to follow. All the dissipated motion which a lifetime of doubt had brought about was behind him. There would be no more waste. He knew what he wanted and could summon all his forces behind obtaining it. There would be a price, and it would be a grave price, but he was prepared to pay it. He was not afraid.
Isabela looked up at him, a question in her eyes.
"Nothing will happen to Carmina," he said grimly.
"You are a good man, Vic," she answered, embracing him. They kissed tenderly and held each other tightly.
Then they broke away, a trifle embarrassed. "Well, if I love the daughter I'd better cut out the hanky-panky with the mother."
"You can love us both, Vic in your own way. But I do think it best that we do not have anything more to do with each other-in this way. You have been very good to me. You have restored to me something I have lost, and I will never forget it."
"And you have restored to me something I was about to lose, and I won't ever forget it either."
Silently, but smiling deeply to themselves out of the secret of love they shared, they returned to the hotel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carmina was sewing when he entered the cottage later that afternoon.
She started and her hand flew up to her breast, and then she saw it was Vic and she smiled. It was like her mother's smile, placid and accepting, but it had only a trace of understanding and experience compared to Isabela's. Isabela was like a mature mascot who knows her master's wishes beforehand and out of years of association does what is expected of her. Carmina was like a puppy who doesn't understand that anything is expected of her, but goes along with it anyway because he is the master and she loves him and wants to please him.
"I'm so glad to see you," she said in her high, delicate voice.
"I've come to take you away for a few hours," he said.
She nodded gladly. "I don't like it here."
"I know you don't, little flower, but you must stay here as you're told."
"Why?"
"Why?" Yes, why? How do you begin to tell this child, he wondered, about-well about life? "There are people on the island who can harm you. They will go away soon, but until they do we want you to stay away from them."
She nodded again, but she didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. She was leaving her fate in his hand, and if he said this was the right thing to do, it was the right thing to do. That's what her nod meant.
"Where are we going now?"
"I thought we'd go out on a sailboat, just you and I. We'll go far out in the ocean, and we'll talk and swim. And maybe I'll make love to you."
"Okay," she said.
"Just like that? Okay? Doesn't what I just said mean any more to you than 'Okay'?"
She looked puzzled. "You said what we would do and I would like to do that, so I said okay. Is it not okay?"
"Yes, you wonderful little infant, it's okay."
He took her by the hand and led her down the path to the beach. He went along cautiously, jumping at every snap of a twig. He suspected his comings and goings would be watched carefully from here on in case he decided to double cross Sparling. He was sure he'd been able to get away from the hotel undetected, and nobody was likely to be on the beach at this hour, since they were all at a cocktail party up at the hotel. He had had an urgent need to see Carmina, to make sure she was all right, and he had slipped away down to the dock. As he started down the beach he saw the sloop he'd had brought in and decided it would be nice to get away from it all with Carmina for a little while.
They reached the edge of the forest and raced across the beach, hopped into the boat and pushed off. They headed north and he made her keep her head down until they were a good distance out to sea, in case someone with binoculars took it in his head to find out who was in the sailboat.
They had a good leeward breeze and soon they were cruising along at a good clip, away from the island, away from the danger. Vic took off his shirt and sat contemplatively at the tiller, watching Carmina intently. She had a hand in the water and peered at the surf with child-like curiosity. Every once in a while she'd look up at him and laugh sheepishly, and then she'd gaze back into the water again, thinking big thoughts which she would never be able to express. Finally she looked up, serious and disturbed. "If the wind is coming from behind us, how is the sailboat going to get back to the island?"
He made a dozen attempts to describe how the combination of a boat's keel, the position of the sail, and the maneuver known as tacking enabled a sailor to make way against the wind, but ended up by shrugging his shoulders and saying "Let's hope the wind is blowing the other way by the time we're ready to go back."
"Okay," she said, a little dubious, but having perfect faith in him. A little while later she said "I have been to Cat Island."
Not knowing exactly what to do with this information, but sensing she was very proud of it, he said with mock solemnity, "You have seen a lot of the world."
"I have," she agreed. "But it isn't so hot."
"It isn't."
"No. Cat Island is like Topaz, only bigger."
"Oh. I guess if you've seen one place, you've seen them all."
"Yes," she said, a little wearily.
"It must be terrible to be so jaded at such an early age." She nodded emphatically.
They sailed on a bit more, and then he suggested they stop and go for a swim. He adjusted the mainsail while she threw out the anchor, which almost succeeded in throwing her out with it.
They faced each other for a moment, indecisive and a little ill at ease, and then, with a startling combination of frankness and modesty, she pulled her dress up, over her head, and off. Vic's lower lip hung down stupidly for a moment, and then he regained his composure.
But he couldn't help gazing at the loveliness of her body. It was lithe and sleek, a rich creamy beige. Although she wasn't very tall, her slenderness gave that impression of length. Her legs were slim and firm, and her breasts were fuller than he had thought when he had last seen them held tightly down by her sarong. They were high and they sloped upwards to her rosy brown nipples.
She leaned back on her hands and stretched out, exhibiting her loveliness to him and looking wistfully at him for approval. He was not long in giving it to her. "You are the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth," he said, moved by an emotion so strong and so pure he thought he might cry.
"Now you," she said.
He removed his pants and stood before her. She put a hand out shyly and touched his broad chest, then ran it over his stomach. There was nothing sexual about the gesture, and he did not get aroused . She was merely appraising him. "You are also a beautiful creature," she said.
They stood a long moment taking in the beauty of each other's face and form. It was more than a tropical breeze that whipped between them. It was also a turbulence of the mind and heart, the mutual attraction, the mutual desire, the mutual need, all unspoken, yet as palpable as the sea that lapped gently at the stilled boat, and as powerful as the dark thunderhead that billowed and boiled on the western horizon.
She leaned forward slightly and he put his hands out to her waist.
Suddenly the spell was broken. She giggled like a schoolgirl and dove overbroad. Her body described a graceful arc, her back arched, her breasts stretched tight, her long legs closed and fully extended, her small ripe buttocks causing no interruption to the delicate slope of her spine. For a moment she was suspended in midair as though time had stopped, and then she cut into the green water with hardly a splash at all.
Vic stood flatfooted, pouting in mock frustration. She came to the surface, brushed her raven hair out of her eyes, and let out another devilish titter. "You tease," he shouted, shaking his fist."
"Come catch me," she shouted back.
He stepped up to the gunwale and poised there for a moment and readied to spring. Just as his body tensed itself for the leap she disappeared. He aimed for the spot where she had just been and sliced into the center of the ripples. His hands were out and he groped for her but came up with nothing.
He rose to the surface and as the brine drained from his eyes he heard her giggle again. He spun around and saw her hanging onto the boat. He made straight for her and when he was a few yards away there was a big splash and all he saw was an ankle and a blur of toe and she was gone. He headed to the right to cut her off and when he arrived there she was to his left at the prow. "I'll get you yet," he yelled, panting, and took off for the prow. Again she ducked under just before he got there. He treaded water patiently waiting for her to pop up and nothing happened. He began to grow worried until he heard "Here, Vic," on the other side of the boat. Stealthily he ducked down and swam under, peering through the emerald green for a trace of her olive flesh.
Naturally, nothing was there when he arrived.
"Okay, the joke is over," he called, getting just a little peeved.
The answer was-silence.
Then there was a finger on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Carmina leaning over the side of the boat, looking very smug. Her breasts hung down freely, quivering and glossy. He reached a hand up to them.
Just as it was about to close over one of them she took a deep breath and squirted a mouthful of water in his eye, giggling and shrieking and jumping up and down like an obstreperous chimpanzee.
He took a mouthful of water himself, scampered over the gunwale and grabbed her ankle just as she was getting ready to leap over the side. She wriggled for a moment, realized it was useless, and relaxed. She lay panting and exhausted waiting for him. He grabbed her by the shoulders, brought her body against his and put his lips near hers.
And then he blew the water into her face.
They laughed and laughed until their sides hurt, and then it was time to stop laughing.
It was time for seriousness now. He sat down on the leather cushion aft that ran across the beam. She got up and lay on her back across his knees, her head cushioned in his left arm.
"We've talked and we've swum," he said, looking down at her angelic face, still glistening from the water.
"And now we will make love," she said.
"Yes, Carmina, now we will make love."
"What is it like?"
"It can be many things,' he said, running his fingers down her underarms and over her smooth breasts, which were now gentle slopes lying low on her body because it was arched over his knees.
She shivered. "Do that again," she said. Again he let his hand caress the flesh of her arm and her breasts. The tips began to pull in the dark flesh around them and rise up. "And again." They were hard now, like a couple of young cherries.
"It is many things," he said once more. "It is pleasure, like this:" he let his fingers glide over the nipples. She sucked her breath in sharply and pulled her knees up. Her breath came perceptibly faster. "Or, it can be pain, like this."
"No, it is not exactly pain," she said. "It was a nice pain, like scratching an itch."
"Yes, that's what it is like. But this is like the biggest itch and the biggest scratch."
"I feel funny inside," she said, running a hand over her abdomen.
"You'll feel a lot of things now," he said, getting up and resting her on her back.
She looked up at him with worried eyes. He smiled his assurance to her, then kneeled and placed a tender kiss on her lips. His tongue moved cautiously forward, flicking against her lips as if asking permission to enter.
His hand traced a pattern from her underarm slowly over her breasts, across her smooth, silky belly, lightly down her thighs and over her buttocks. He'd pause over the firm flesh of her behind, cupping it in his hands and gripping it firmly, then releasing it and sliding up her spine. With each fondle and caress her body would gravitate to his hand, thrusting against it when he touched some highly sensitive nerve.
She expanded her chest when he touched her breasts, letting them rise up and flow into his palm, urging the tip up between his fingers, sighing when his fingers closed over it. Her stomach grew tight when his hand reached it, her thighs quivered to the touch and her legs moved restlessly. He paused on her thighs and began a circular motion, dipping a little lower each time, and each time he did her pelvis would lift.
Her sighs were coming faster and faster, her eyes becoming hazy with ecstasy, her lips pouting, her body shaking with expectation.
It was time.
He rose over her and looked affectionately at this shy flower who soon would be virgin no longer. Her body stretched out vulnerable before him, helpless, a little afraid, but ready to accept whatever the initiation had in store for her.
He raised up on his knees. "It will be okay, he whispered.
She nodded bravely.
Then he covered her with his body. Her eyes shut tight and she winced, on the verge of crying out but holding it back, biting her lower lip until it was white. Her fists clenched, pounded his back, and then opened and he felt her nails sink into his shoulders. "Oh Vic it hurts so much, so much, so much," she cried, tears welling over and disappearing into her hair.
"I know, my darling," he whispered close to her ear. Their bodies relaxed for a moment and they remained entwined in each other's arms. She caught her breath, but her face was drained of all color.
Involuntarily her hips began to move slowly and smoothly.
"Vic, something is happening."
"Yes, darling, yes," he murmured, feeling his own rhythm beginning its pulse.
"Don't stop," she said, her voice taking on a tone he had never heard before, like that of an adolescent turned mature in the course of a moment. "Oh Vic, oh Mon Dieu!" There was a deep convulsion, her moist flesh engulfed him and pulled him into a vortex. She clung to him and pulled him against her with a newfound power. That delicate body he was so afraid of crushing seemed to be made of iron now.
Gone was the child, and gone for him was the last trace of his own youthfulness, which he had given to her in exchange for hers. They were man and woman now, kissing deeply, drinking of each other's limitless fountain of love, loving unashamedly in the middle of an endless ocean under an endless sky. Two people for whom the rest of the world did not exist, nor space nor time.
They were man and woman now.
Vic felt a cold splash on his back. Looking up he saw the northwest sky growing dark with rain clouds. The sea had grown choppy and a wind was stirring over the port bow.
"You see, we're lucky after all. It's time to go back, and the wind is blowing toward Topaz. I told you to leave it to me."
She nodded and smiled, but there was something in her expression that said "I know you're only teasing me. You can't fool me any more. The wind belongs to the earth and you don't have any control over it as I thought you did. You're not the magician I thought you were when we set out to sea. This has been a great, wonderful voyage for me, Vic. I left Topaz a girl and I return to it an adult. The world has lost its wonder and magic. There's an explanation for everything, and if I am patient I will understand. But what I do not understand yet is-what is this beautiful feeling in the depths of my stomach?"
Vic understood and left her to her thoughts. He weighed anchor himself, let the mainsail baloon out, and headed for Topaz.
Carmina sat beside him, her head against his chest, wondering.
CHAPTER NINE
She was lying naked under the sheets when he returned to his room.
"Hello," Dana said in a singsong, lush voice. A bottle of rum and a half empty glass stood on the night table. "I thought you'd never get back."
"I was tending to a couple of matters."
"Yes," she said, reaching for the glass, "a couple of matters. Exactly a couple." The sheet slid off her breasts. She made no effort to pull it back up. She took another slug of liquor and repeated "Exactly a couple."
"What does that mean?"
"Why Isabela and her daughter, of course. Or Carmina and her mother. Either way it adds up to a couple, doesn't it, darling?"
He walked over to the night table and took the bottle and glass away, pouring himself a shot. "You've been drinking too much. I don't know what you're talking about."
She slid low under the sheet again, pulling it tightly around her so that every slope and hill of her body was clearly outlined. As they talked she kept running her hands over herself, molding the sheet firmly to the fit of her figure. Soon her nipples started to rise, pushing the sheet up like marbles. "How about joining me in here so that we don't have to shout to each other."
"No, thanks."
"Suit yourself. And speaking of suits, do you like mine? It's the latest thing." She smoothed the sheet between her legs. "What's the matter, darling, cat got your tongue? Which cat? Mama or daughter?"
He spun around. "Drunk or not, you'd better keep your mouth shut!"
She pouted. "But I'm here to help you."
"How can you help me?"
"Oh, I have ways."
"Do you? You don't even know what the trouble is."
"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. I have ways of finding things out, too."
"Well suppose you tell me what you've found it."
"Suppose you sit down beside me."
He stared at her, feeling a wave of nausea. After his experience but an hour before the thought of making gross love with this woman was repulsive.
"If you'll make it worth my while, I'll make it worth yours. Come on, Vic, I won't bite you. And bring the rum with you. I'm not quite as well oiled as I'd like to be."
He hesitated, wondering what she knew, and how much damage she could do with what she did know. He decided it wasn't worth taking any risks. He sat down beside her, filled the glass with rum, and handed it to her. "Well?"
"Well yourself," she said arching her back. "Go easy, my love. They're tender.' With a practiced hand he started to caress her breasts, smoothly and slowly over the sheet, first one and then the other in lazy circular motions. "That's very nice," she whispered, shutting her eyes.
"What do you have to tell me?" he asked in a voice calculated to be gentle. There was no sense demanding. She'd only get belligerent.
"First, that you're in love with Carmina."
"How do you know?"
"Sheer intuition. The way you got panicky when Sparling told you to find the girl. The way you tried to throw everybody off the trail. The way you went running to her mother when Sparling laid down the law this morning. Am I right or am I wrong?'
"You're telling me, not asking me. Go on."
"Caress me a little harder." He did what she asked, fondling her breast with a sure hand, bringing the tip to a fine head between his fingers. "Mmmm, that's much better. I like when you touch me that way."
"Where is this girl Carmina?"
"I don't know, but you do. Hidden out somewhere around here, I'm sure."
As he rubbed her breasts he began to pull the sheet lower, revealing a little more flesh each time. "And what about Isabela?"
"Yes, what about her? You certainly are playing both ends against the middle, aren't you? And guess who's in the middle? Little old Dana. Old little Dana. Pull the sheet lower, Vic." He put his hand over her stomach and gathered the sheet in. It slid down, down her breasts until it hovered over their tips. Suddenly they were free, large creamy bulbs with erect nubs of pinkish tan. "Hold them in your hand, Vic. That excites me."
His hand hovered and then plunged down, like a hawk settling on its prey. "I wish I had your hands for a brassiere. I'd be the happiest girl in the world. I'd never come back to earth. Oh, don't stop, darling. Keep it up. Faster!"
"What do you know about us?" he asked with a keen edge to his voice. He was growing impatient.
She sat up and took another drink, then lay down again and shut her eyes. "That you were-or maybe still are--lovers."
"Okay. That's what you know. Assuming it to be true, and I'm not admitting it is, what are these 'ways' of yours to help me?"
"Nothing for nothing. If you want information, you'll have to keep paying for it." She put her hand behind his head and pulled it down to her breasts. "Kiss them nice and gently. Let me feel your mouth. That's it."
Suddenly he stood up. "That's enough," he snapped.
Her eyes shot open and she stared at him with an expression of fear and amazement. "Dana, what do you want?"
She caught her breath. "I want to help you. Don't you think I know what you're going through? With Sparling practically holding a' gun to your head and ordering you to play pimp for the girl you love?"
"That's very noble of you, but if it's one thing you've taught me it's that there are no giveaways. Nothing for nothing, something for something. Now how do you intend to help me, and what do you want from me?"
She put her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them. Her features softened and a look of tired sadness came over her eyes. "Vic," she started in a tremulous voice, "I'm not an old hag by any means, but I am getting along in years. I'm the wrong side of twenty five, and that ain't good."
"What are you getting at?" he asked, sensing damned well what she was getting at.
"Darling, you know, don't you, that I've loved you for a long, long time. That I'd do anything for you and anything to get you."
There was sincerity in her voice. "I know that, yes," he answered in the same tone. "But I don't love you." She flinched. "Do you know that?"
"Yes, I know. I've always known. But I've always thought you could grow to love me."
"I would probably grow to hate you."
"I'm willing to take that chance."
"I'm not, and I'm not willing to marry you to prove I'm right. That's what you're leading up to, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's it."
"Since you know how I feel about you, I would be doing you a favor by marrying you, wouldn't I?"
"I suppose you could put it that way."
"Let's put it that way, since it happens to be true. Now I want to know what favor you're offering me in exchange?"
She looked intently at him. "I can pull Clayboro off Carmina for the rest of the convention."
He put his hand to his chin. "How can you do that?"
"I have a certain charm, a certain way of making men happy, of making them forget. I have a couple of tricks in this little body that would put Clayboro's redheaded girlfriend in the little leagues. I'll use them. He'll walk around here with a perpetual boyish grin on his face."
Vic shook his head thoughtfully. "So you'll occupy him for the duration of the convention and leave me alone with Carmina, is that the idea?"
"Yes, that's the idea."
"In exchange for which I agree to marry you when the convention is over."
She nodded.
"What makes you think I'll be willing to give Carmina up then?"
"I think you will. Darling, I can understand how you feel about her. But you're a grown man and she's a child, unsophisticated, unworldly, inexperienced. You have to go back to civilization at the end of this party. Can you see yourself taking her with you? Can you fee something like that lasting? You're having a wonderful, beautiful thing with her, but it's not permanent. It can't be. It has to end, Vic, and I'm not saying that because I want it to. It just has to."
He poured himself another drink, brooding.
"But at least you'll know that when you do leave her and Topaz, the affair will have been unsullied. No harm will have come to her. You'll have something beautiful to cherish for the rest of your life, instead of looking back to the memory of her tumbling in Lucas Clayboro's bed-and maybe in a thousand beds after that."
There was truth in the picture she painted, very seductive truth. What was he going to do with Carmina anyway? Take her back? Stay behind with her? He hadn't even thought that far ahead. He had lived from day to day with her and for her. But Dana was right. Shortly the convention would come to an end. Then what?
But one thing he was sure of: he was sworn to protect her as long as he was on this island.
Was a lifetime with Dana worth a few weeks with Carmina?
He had only to think of the overpowering beauty of their lovemaking on the boat, and the answer came to him resoundingly: yes, it was worth it. For what love would life hold for him when he had left Carmina and was back in the states? What did it matter what happened afterwards? He would indeed cherish Carmina in his heart forever, wherever he went, whoever he was with-whomever he married.
"What happens if I don't agree?"
"Sparling will ruin you."
"The way I feel now, I'm willing to face that."
"But if you could have both-both Carmina and your position with Sparling, it would be all the better, wouldn't it?"
"Of course it would."
"Then there shouldn't be any question in your mind."
"Well, there still is. I have to spend the rest of my life with you. That's enough to make me pause."
"I'm offering you your cake and the chance to eat it too. On the other hand, I can take the cake away and you won't have had even a nibble."
"Oh?"
"Yes." She reached under the pillow and took put a photograph. She handed it to him, saying "If this fell into Carmina's hands, the shock would overcome her. She'd never understand you, and she'd never forgive you."
It was a picture of Vic embracing Isabela on the beach in their cove. It had been taken this morning.
"Compromising, isn't it?"
He tore it in half and cracked her across the face with the back of his hand. "You miserable bitch. You had us followed this morning, didn't you? That was the sound I heard up above us. One of those photographers Sparling has hired to catch our victims with their pants down." He grabbed her by the throat and pushed his thumbs into her windpipe. Her eyes bulged out as he shook her. She clawed at his arms and back and writhed naked on the bed. Then her grip started to relax.
Suddenly he was stricken with the horror of what he was doing and he let go, letting her drop back on the bed, her mouth wide open and her tongue hanging out. She heaved and moaned for several minutes. Vic buried his head in his hands.
Finally all was silent.
"You have the negative of that picture, don't you?"
She nodded, and her lip curled in vengeful hatred.
"All right. You win." He grabbed her by the hair and she threw her hands in front of her face protectively. "But if you don't keep Clayboro satisfied for the rest of this convention, I just may finish what I started to do just now. Now get dressed and get out of here."
CHAPTER TEN
He was out in the sloop and he heard Carmina calling to him and giggling in her lovable way. He jumped overboard and went far, far under water until his feet touched bottom. Up above him, churning the green water at the surface, was a pair of strong legs, slim and tapered. He paddled up like a great bird but he never seemed to be getting any closer to the top. Then the legs were suddenly there and he put his arms around them, pulling the body under.
He was horrified to see Dana, her hands on her breasts. He choked, and the water rushed into his lungs. He put his hands around her throat and she let go. He popped to the surface, gasping for air. Then there was a blood curling shriek and he looked up at the boat. Carmina was naked and Clayboro was naked on top of her. Standing in line behind him, with ugly leers distorting their faces, were Sparling and Antoine Theodore and a dozen other men whose faces he couldn't identify. Carmina cried out for help. Isabela was pounding at the men with all the fury of her fists but they only laughed.
He swam towards the boat. The sail ballooned out and the boat started to pull away from him. He swam faster and faster but the boat pulled away and out of sight. The sky was dark and threatening and the waves lifted him up high on their crests, then dropped him with a sickening lurch. He looked around for something to hold on to, but there was only Dana, her hands under her breasts, offering them to him. Then the storm burst on him in its full fury, and he felt himself going under, further and further and....
Isabela's hand was caressing his forehead. "It's all right, Vic, it's all right. You were having a bad dream." She loaned over and kissed his cheek. His body was trembling uncontrollably.
He reached for a cigarette. It took him ten seconds to get the match lit and close enough to the cigarette to get it started. Then he drew the smoke in deeply, and soon the trembling subsided. "I never want to go through that again," he said with relief. "Carmina ... is she all right?" Isabela's mouth was tight with concern. He looked around the hut. Carmina was nowhere around. He sat bolt upright, but Isabela restrained him with a firm hand.
"She's all right. She's in the back hanging some clothes up to dry." He looked out the window and caught a glimpse of her slim body over a basket. "But I don't know how long it will last, Vic. I'm afraid."
"What is it? What happened?"
"One of my waiters served breakfast to Sparling and Clayboro this morning. He overheard their conversation and he told me about it."
"What did they say?"
"Clayboro told Sparling that Dana made ... how do you say?
"Made a play for him?"
"Yes. She's very sexy, very hot in bed. She had him all night. He's very tired this morning."
"Tired, but is he happy?"
"No. He said she's a very hot number, and then he shrugged his shoulders. Sparling asked him what was wrong, and he said he has to leave the convention earlier than he planned. Sparling turned to the color of coconut milk. Sparling asked him if he was enjoying himself. Clayboro thanked him very much, said he was having a wonderful time, but still had to go back."
Vic pounded his fist in his palm. "Damn, I was afraid of that. Dana just isn't enough for him."
"Sparling says very bluntly, 'it's the women, isn't it?' And Clayboro says 'It's not your fault, Harold. I guess what I want isn't to be had.' And Sparling says 'what if you had that native girl?' Clayboro looks very shrewdly and says 'That might induce me to stay?' "
Vic loked grim. "It didn't work, then."
"What didn't work?'
"Nothing. What happened then?"
"Sparling excused himself and left the table. Clayboro smiled. He's very shrewd, that Clayboro. Very shrewd man."
Vic dragged frenetically at his cigarette. "Sparling is desperate. I've got to do something, but what?"
"Wait, I'm not through." She stood up and began pacing.
"There's more?"
"Yes. Sparling goes to Antoine and asks him where Carmina is. Antoine asks him why he wants to know. Sparling refuses to say and Antoine refuses to say also. Then Sparling tells Antoine everything." She clenched her hands together.
"Yes?"
"Sparling offers him twenty five thousand dollars if he will bring Carmina to him."
"Oh, God. That slimy son of a bitch. How do you know about this?"
"Antoine told me. He called me in after Sparling left and ordered me to get Carmina. I made him tell me why he wanted her. He keeps saying 'We'll all be rich, we'll all be rich.' How I hate that swine!" she hissed.
"You're not the only one. What did you tell him you'd do?"
"I said I didn't know where to find Carmina. He called me a liar and struck me in the mouth. He shouted he knows she is here, and for half the money Sparling offered him he said he would run down here and run back the hill with Carmina under his arm. I know he is not lying. He has done more for less money. I told him I would go. He said he would kill me if I don't bring her back."
"And he will."
"No doubt of if. Vic." She gazed at him with a look of sharp distress. "We must get her off the island."
"Yes. We must. But that isn't the answer for you or for me."
"Let him try to kill me. I've wanted to slit his throat for the longest time. Ever since ... since he killed my man. I am not afraid of him. Nor am I afraid to die. I will kill or be killed as long as no harm comes to her." Then she turned a critical eye on Vic, as if she knew too well what was running through his mind. "And you?"
"And me? I'm washed up if she escapes."
Her brows furowed. "You said you were willing to make the sacrifice. You are not going back on your word, are you?"
He felt like raging at her single-minded obtuseness, but realized it was senseless. She had but one thing to live for. It wasn't her fault if she excluded everything else but Carmina's welfare from her purposes. But where did that leave him? With forced calmness he said "It isn't as simple as you think."
"Why is it not?" she asked sharply.
"Dana has a photograph of you and me kissing on the beach. She had it taken yesterday. She wants me to marry her after the convention, and I promised I would if she distracted Clayboro's attention. You know what happened. It didn't work. If she finds out I know it didn't work, she'll show the photograph to Carmina."
"But why? What good will that do? She knows she'll lose you now anyway. Why do that to my Carmina?"
"Simply out of spite. Sheer, bitchy spite. If she can't have me, nobody will have me."
"How low people are," she said bitterly.
"You just don't know how low," he answered helplessly.
"But what are you going to do? You haven't answered my question."
"I don't know. But I've given you my word. Do you believe me, Isabela?"
"I will have to. But remember what I said if you deceive me," she said, her eyes narrowing to blazing slits "Where are you going?"
"I want to talk to Carmina. And then ... I think I'll pay a visit to Lucas Clayboro."
"To Clayboro? What for?"
"I'm not sure I know yet. Stay here close to Carmina I don't know when I'll be back, and I don't know wha news I'll have when I return. If worse comes to worse ... '
"Yes?"
"It will be the worst ever.' He managed a smile, and she returned it.
He got up and went out. Carmina was on her tiptoes hanging clothes on a vine stretched between two trees She didn't see him coming up behind her. He put his arms around her narrow waist and clasped her stomach She settled easily into his arms.
He kissed her at the graceful nape of her neck. "Did you sleep well?"
"For the few hours we slept, yes."
"We didn't sleep very much, did we?"
"No, and I am sorry for the few hours we did."
"Why?"
"Don't be an idiot," she reprimanded, raping him on the knuckles. "You know very well why."
"No, I haven't the slightst idea. Do you mean because I wasn't making love to you while we slept?"
"That. And also because you go away from me when you sleep."
"I do? How?"
"You turn over. You turn your back to me. It is cruel. I wish you would stay awake all the time. And when you are awake all the time I wish you would make love to me all the time."
"There would be nothing left of me if I did. I have to sleep to rebuild my body so that I can make love to you when I wake up. Do you understand?"
She twisted around inside the circle of his arms and faced him, putting her head on his chest. "But why do you have to turn away?"
"I don't know why," he said. "Maybe I sleep better on that side, did you ever think of that?"
"I sleep better in your arms. You should sleep better in mine. Do you know what I like?"
"What?"
Her face turned a shade pinker. "I like when I face away from you and you put one arm under me and one arm over me and put your hands so."
She demonstrated, turning her back to him, taking his hands and cupping them on her breasts.
"You like that, huh"
"Yes. I like that very much."
"Good. I like it too. I love your breasts."
"They are not as big as my mother's."
Vic started. What did she know? He played it cool. "I wouldn't know. But I do know that yours are the most beautiful in the whole world. I would love nothing better than to go through the rest of my life with my hands around them."
Again she turned around. Evidently she had simply dropped a stray remark and had no idea of what had gone on between her mother and him. She gazed at him. lovingly. "The rest of your life?"
Again the charge went through him. Did she suspect what he had in store for her at the end of his stay? Or was she simply wondering idly about their future together? It was funny how perceptive she had become all of a sudden, as if the loss of her virginity had marked the beginning of an adult, almost sophisticated insight into the human-mind processes.
"It's nice to think about it," he answered noncommittally. "And now I must go for a while."
"Where?"
"To the hotel. I have some matters to attend to there. I'll be back later." He clasped her very tightly, burying his face in her soft black hair. The danger that crackled like electricity in the air seemed to unite them in a bond of fear. "Oh darling, darling, you're so precious to me."
She sensed his uneasiness. "What is it?"
"Why, nothing."
"It is as if you're leaving me forever."
"What gave you that idea?" He chucked her under the chin.
"You're trembling. Your voice is not sure. You're thinking of something that is not me."
"I'm thinking of everything that is you, darling, even though it may not seem that way. Everything, everything revolves around you. And nothing-nothing-has any meaning without you. I'll be back, Carmina. I promise."
"Be careful, Vic."
"What do you mean by that?"
She shrugged her shoulders. Her tongue couldn't find the words, but her heart had found the truth. All her senses had been heightened since yesterday. "I just don't like those people up there. They all have the same look as Antoine. You will be careful, won't you?"
"Yes, little flower. I will be." He brushed her lips with his and squeezed her hand. Then he turned from her and went back into the house. Isabela ws sitting with her hands in her lap, staring vacantly, like a marble lion guarding the entrance to a bank. He smiled his assurance to her. She nodded, but that was all.
As he walked out and headed down the path for the beach, he had a funny thought. "There I was," he said to himself, "Injuns to the left of me, bandits to the right of me, a prairie fire in front of me, a wide deep chasm in back of me. And what do you suppose I did?" he asked his imaginary audience.
"What did you do?" it asked back eagerly.
He paused to come up with the answer.
"I died," he said out loud. And the bitter echo faded into the trees.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The long trek along the beach and up the path to the hotel gave Vic time to think. He needed that time, and he knew a lot was riding on the conclusions he drew before reaching the hotel.
What disturbed him was this sudden impulse to see Clayboro. It had just popped into his head, maybe because he had tried every way out but that one. But what was he planning to say to the man? What did he want from him? What could he give Clayboro? The way he handled this thing could mean life or death, and it would involve everyone wrapped up in this mess.
He tried to imagine the dialogue between them, and he saw himself in the position of appealing to Clayboro's humanity. He would lay it on the line. He loved Carmina, but Carmina didn't mean a damn thing to Clayboro. Wouldn't Clayboro be a nice guy for once in his life and leave alone somebody who meant a lot to another human?
Vic kicked the sand. The argument was nonsense. The chances of a hardened guy like Clayboro swallowing it were a thousand to one-against. He would simply say, what is it worth?
And Vic didn't have a thing to offer him.
It would have to be a bargain. And a hard one. What did Clayboro want so badly-besides Carmina-that he would do anything to have it?
Then it came to him.
He stopped for a minute and pushed the sand around with his toe, letting everything drop into place in his brain. There was risk involved. Grave risk. But he wanted Carmina, loved her, needed her. He wasn't sure how it would end-staying behind with her, leaving her or bringing her back to the States-but whatever happened her welfare was first in his heart, and no risk was too great to insure she would be safe.
It meant he must be ruthless now, something he had never had any need to be, or any desire. But what other path was open? Humanity wasn't worth a damn in this rat race. You had to take a stand, and now he could no longer straddle the fence. He would have to take that plunge he'd been avoiding and trying to go around since it all started, that plunge into corruption and brutality, if he was going to get what he wanted.
He would play the game their game-with a vengeance.
He set the plans firmly in his mind, and then headed for the hotel, a firm purposefulness in his confident stride.
He would see Clayboro all right. But he had a stop to make first.
Dana was at the bar, charming the guests of honor.
She'd played a big role in this convention, troubleshooting, smoothing over the ruffled feelings of these two congressmen whenever Sparling pushed too hard, enticing them into the trap when Sparling didn't push hard enough. She had them wrapped around her little finger.
Vic watched her for a second, admiring the way she made sure they had a good look at her breasts whose top halves were uncovered almost to the nipple by the cleavage of her dress, and that they saw plenty of thigh above the rim of her stockings and nearly to her panties, as she dangled one leg off the stool.
He put his arms around Mutt and Jeff and laughed. "Gentlemen, I wonder if I might have use for just a minute of this lovely woman."
"You might, chum," one of them said jovially, "but I don't know if she can tear herself away."
"Yes," chirped the other, "we have captivated her and she is under our spell. If you can break the spell she's yours-but only for a minute."
"I don't know what magic you weave, gents, but I'll try my counter-spell. Since we're sitting at a counter, it shouldn't be too difficult."
They both guffawed.
"I've got to have a word with you right away," he said in a low tone to her. His eyes flashed unmistakable seriousness.
"The boy means business," said one congressman.
"No, I think he means pleasure," said the other, and they burst out laughing again.
"I'll be back in a few sees," she said, kissing each on the forehead.
"A few sex," the first man said, wheezing a loud laugh.
"She's a real card," said the other.
"A real card. She can trump me any time."
They left the two members of our exalted legislature trading obscene and unfunny remarks and laughing uproariously.
"Where to?" He had his hand on her arm and was guiding her into the lobby double-time. "Hey, what's the big rush?"
"Something big. Let's go up to your room."
They hurried up the stairs and down the hall. As soon as they were inside her room he grabbed her by the shoulders and looked at her sternly. "As long as we're going to be married, how would you like a nest egg of seventy-five thousand dollars?"
Her brows shot up. "Keep talking, honey. I'm interested, to say the least."
He pushed her down in an armchair. "Then listen to this. Clayboro called me into his room a little while ago. He said Sparling has been putting big pressure on him to call off the investigation."
"I know that."
"I mean big pressure. Bribes, threats, everything. Clayboro got too cagey and Sparling's putting all the heat on. Sparling told him if it comes to a showdown, the drug industry may go down, but so will Clayboro. Clayboro said he's not afraid. Sparling told him he would be if he knew how much we have on him. Sparling told him about the pictures we have of him-being chummy with drug people, getting off the convention yacht, in bed with this girl and that, and various other shockers. Clayboro played it cool, and he laughed off the threat. Then Sparling-sometimes I have to hand it to that guy...."
"When your back is against the wall you think of a lot of things you never thought you could think."
"I guess so, because he was really shrewd on this point. He told Clayboro we could publish a photo of him a helluva lot quicker than he could get an investigation going. Sparling even said he was ready to wirephoto some of these to the big newspapers. Anything Clayboro did about the drug industry after that would be discredited to a great degree."
"Don't give that much credit to Harold. He's going ahead pretty much according to schedule. But I must say I didn't think he had so much guts. He pulled it off, huh?"
"It would look that way, wouldn't it?" Vic said. So far so good. Dana wasn't questioning anuy of it. It even sounded authentic to him.
"But how do you know all this?"
"I'm coming to that now," he answered. He organized himself for the rest of the story-the crucial part-and then launched into it. It astounded him how fluently the stuff flowed from his mouth. "Clayboro came to my room. He was pretty agitated, even though he tried not to show it. He asked me how much I knew about what was going on and I said I knew all of it. After all, I'd planned the convention and I'm Harold's right hand man. He asked me if I realized what they were planning to do to him and I said I knew. He said people have tried to con him before and he's spit in their faces. But this is dirtier than anything he's ever encountered."
"I hope you told him what's at stake for us. We're not down here to play potsy, you know."
"That's more or less what I told him. He said he thinks Sparling is bluffing. I told him he'd be a damned fool to call the bluff."
"I'm glad you backed Harold up. You're not particularly in his good graces right now."
"I didn't back him up to get in his good graces, as you'll see now."
Then Vic pulled a smart move. "But first, I want to know one thing," he said, sitting on the arm of her chair and looking deeply into her eyes. "Can I trust you?"
"Can you trust me?" I've been wondering the same thing about you. Of course you can trust me," she said defensively, her tone ruffled and hurt.
"I'm not so sure. You seem to live for Sparling and Sparling Drugs. If it came to a choice between Sparling and me...."
"Believe me, baby, I'd take you in nothing flat. The only reason I've lived for Sparling is that there's been nobody better to latch onto."
"That's all I want to know." He'd put her on the defensive and if he could keep her there he was in like Flynn.
"But you didn't answer my question," she said, showing a little more resistance than was desirable to him. "Can I trust you?"
"I couldn't say so a little while ago. But I can now." He spoke in a tone tinged with dejection.
"What about Carmina?"
"The hell with her!" he snapped.
She stood up and went to him. He was standing by the window, his back to her, his head hanging low. She put her hand on his shoulder. "Why Vic, what's happened?"
"That double-dealing bitch. Double-dealing, ha! Triple or quadruple or Christ knows how many is more like it."
"You mean she's not as Simon pure as you thought?" Dana's voice had a note of triumph in it which she couldn't suppress.
"Simon pure? Why, do you know what I've learned about her bedroom activities? Do you know how many men she's had since we landed here? And I loved her. I know you're the wrong one to tell this too, but I have to tell somebody. I loved her very much." He turned and held her very tightly. She caressed the back of his neck and whispered "Shush" to him over and over until his explosion of bitterness had subsided.
Finally he said "Anyway, it's over and I'm through with her and I don't give a damn now. The important thing is this convention and my future. Our future, Dana. I think I could grow to love you."
She clutched him warmly, and he could sense a wave of genuine emotion come over her. His heart began to throb with the burden of this elaborate lie. He'd started feeling she couldn't be hurt, but now he wasn't so sure. He felt her opening herself up to him, her embrace one of sheer happiness and relief. "Oh Vic, I ask for nothing more," she sobbed.
He brought himself up sharply and pushed her away from him. "Okay, now for the good news. Clayboro was impressed when I told him Sparling wasn't a man to fool around with. And then I looked at him squarely and said 'Tell me, Lucas, what are those photos worth to you?' He got the idea right away. He said 'What's Sparling paying you for this job?' I said I'm getting twenty-five grand-if it works out. He said 'I'll double it-if you can make sure it doesn't work out.' I said nothing doing. I'd lose my job and then where would I be? Then he said he'd triple it. Seventy-five thousand, that was as high as he'd go, if I'd turn the photos over to him tonight."
Dana whistled. "In other words, seventy-five G's and he's free to pursue this investigation or not, because we'll have nothing on him."
"Exactly. It's a fraction of what he'll earn as soon as he gets back, reveals the drug business scandal, and picks up the stock after it hits rock bottom. As soon as things cool off the stock will rise fast-what the hell, people have to have drugs-and he'll make back many times seventy-five thousand."
"It sounds fantastic-except for one thing. You'll be drawn and quartered by the manufacturers."
"I covered that too," said Vic, thinking fast. "I made him agree to let me work for him." .
"Boy, you sure learn fast. Where is the green, callow youth I knew a few weeks ago?"
"Gone-for good. I've learned enough lessons since then to fill ten books. And now I'm applying them for fun and profit." The lies rolled one after another off his tongue. It wasn't as difficult as he'd thought it would be. It was true that he'd learned a lot recently. So much that it was simple to turn off the better part of himself and play the role of operator to the hilt. He wondered for an instant just how far he could go if he really wanted to follow through. Quite far, he imagined, quite far indeed.
"Then you want me to get the photos, is that it?"
"Yes. And the negatives."
"I know where Sparling's got them hidden."
"Good. Go fetch them. I'll turn them over to him and he'll make his getaway tonight."
She started towards the door and then stopped. "How do we know he won't double-cross you?"
"I'll get it in writing, for one thing, besides a healthy cash downpayment tonight. For another I'll warn him I intend to slit his throat if he crosses me. And I will."
She threw her arms around him. "I'll be back as quickly as I can." She thrust the full form of her body against him and gripped him tight. With fierce lust in her eyes, she said "And later tonight, when it's all over, you and I are going to love each other black and blue!"
He ran a finger down her white throat and plunged his hand down her dress, gripping her breast firmly and urging it up over the bodice. He pressed his mouth to it. He pulled away and said "That's a down payment."
She was panting from the suddenness and eagerness of his advance. "Oh Vic, don't stop." She pushed him away, lifted her dress up.
"We don't have time," he said urgently.
She guided his hand to her thighs. He touched the incredibly soft flesh on the inside of each, lingering a moment and then moving on. "Keep going, darling.
Don't stop." Higher and higher his hand moved, and higher and higher came the pitch of ecstasy that displayed itself in the quivering of her muscles. He reached the legs of her panties and ran both hands under them, exploring the smoothness with deft fingers. He ran his hands around to her buttocks and caressed them. "Good, good, good," she kept murmuring.
Her hips moved in and out, pushing her thighs against him. His hands roamed over her body and came around quickly. His fingers made intimate contact. "Oh, darling. Oh, that's good. That is so good."
Suddenly she shuddered, he could feel a deep pulsing in the flesh of her thighs. She groaned, staggered, and fell into the armchair, breathing like a pump.
After a few minutes she got up and walked-a little shakily-to the door. "I'll be right back for more."
"We'll have to postpone it until I've spoken to Clayboro."
"I hope you're both men of few words, in that case," she answered ,blowing him a kiss. The door closed and then opened again and she stepped back in. "One more thing bothers me, Vic. When Sparling learns that Clayboro is gone with the photographs, he'll make it a living hell for us. Maybe we should go tonight too."
"No, there's no reason why he should suspect you of doublecrossing him. He trusts you implicitly. When the accusations start flying, just play dumb. The story is simply that Clayboro learned, we don't know how, where the photos were hidden, and that's that."
"Okay." She winked and left again.
It was amazing what love had done to her. Her trust and devotion were almost overwhelming. He wondered if there was a bigger heel in the world than him right now-even Sparling, even Clayboro.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The last orange rays of sunlight fell upon two men strolling along the beach. One was tall and distinguished, the formality of his clothes somewhat out of keeping with the tropical scene. The other was of medium height, handsome and bronzed, his white shirt open to the waist to catch the cooling evening breeze.
From a distance they seemed to be getting along cordially enough, sauntering casually over the sand. But this was an illusion. Each was trying, really, to impress the other with an air of calmness. But there was no mistaking the high charge of electric tension that emanated from the two of them. It was admirably suppressed, but the quiet tones with which they spoke had edges of firm purpose that threatened to explode the evening silence at any moment.
The tall man was saying "How many more of them do you have?"
"About two dozen," the other replied. "And the one I showed you was mild compared to some of the others."
They walked a bit further without speaking, then the tall man said "Come now, Vic, you don't suppose I'm so naive as to have believed that Sparling wouldn't try something like this."
"Naivete is something I could never accuse you of, Clayboro."
"Then what makes you think I haven't prepared for it?"
"On the contrary, I'm willing to bet you have prepared for it."
"That's a correct assumption, for the most part. I can't really say I've prepared any counter-measures. But I did expect Sparling would try to blackmail me in some way. I didn't think he'd use incriminating photographs, in fact if I'd seen any photographers around I would have thought twice about coming. But then I'm sure Sparling figured on it, because he certainly did conceal them artfully."
"I'll go along with that," Vic said.
"But let me tell you why it wont work. Cigarette?" He offered a gold case to Vic.
"Thanks." He took one and Sparling held a matching gold lighter to it, then lit his own.
"It won't work for the same reason it hasn't worked in the past. You can imagine that it's been tried on me in the past."
"I can."
"But these people never seem to understand the nature of blackmail, which is that A has something on B, but B doesn't have anything on A, which means that A can make B pay through the nose, But if B also has something on A, then it's a stalemate, like two people pointing guns at each other-a Mexican standoff. Sparling has something on me-those photographs. But I also have something on him--a mountain of statistics about certain practices of his and other drug companies. Practices which the public certainly wouldn't take lightly. Sparling knows that if I go, he goes with me. Likewise I know that if he goes I'm likely to get knocked around in the fray, possibly ruined, possibly even jailed,"
"So you're not afraid of him because you know he's afraid of you."
"Yes, that's it."
"It wouldnt prevent you from calling an investigation, then?"
"Oh, I might think twice about it. It would depend on what Sparling and his friends offered me. A threat wouldn't be enough to stop me. An offer of holdings in these companies would, let's say, make me turn to some other area for amusement."
"Has he offered you any?"
"Some, but his gesture was rather modest."
"You want control," Vic said.
"Yes," Clayboro answered with blunt self-confidence.
"Sparling won't go that far, you know."
"If he were willing to make concessions in that direction I'd be inclined to take the pressure off."
"I think I can make him give you more."
"I'd be grateful to you."
"I'm sure you would. Now let's get back to the photographs."
"Certainly," Clayboro said, "but I don't really see what point there is in talking about them. Whatever Sparling offers me, the photographs will not be part of the deal. He'll hold them forever in his safe, and whenever I begin to rumble a bit he'll take them out and hold them over my head like a sword. Are you saying he'd be willing to part with them?"
"No. You're right, he'd never let them go-if he had them."
Clayboro frowned and his hand stroked his chin. "But he does have them. Or at least, you have them, and you're working for him." Then he looked suspiciously at Vic. "You are working for him, aren't you?"
"Now we come to the interesting part, Clayboro. The answer to that is yes-and no.' Vic glanced at him and noted his reaction. The muscles in his face tightened, his lips pursed, his brow wrinkled. Clayboro's mind had been thrown off balance by this startling development and Vic could almost feel it sending out feelers in a dozen different directions, exploring possible consequences of this new state of affairs.
"Go on," he said, giving Vic the initiative and himself a chance to plot a new course.
"Clayboro, I'm going to drop a little bomb in your lap, and I want you to know that I am completely sincere about this, and absolutely determined to get my way.
I've never been more determined, as a matter-of-fact, and I've accomplished some pretty big things with less determination."
Clayboro turned and looked Vic squarely in the eyes. "I believe it," he said.
"You had better. This is what I want to say: I do have loyalty to Sparling, silly ass that he is ,and to my company and to the industry. But there is something-somebody-I love more, and I love her to the extent that before any harm came to her I would bring the whole drug industry crashing to the ground, and you with it."
"That is a lot of love."
"That is indeed a lot of love, Clayboro," he answered with conviction.
"And who is this lucky creature on whom the fate of the empire rests?"
"Her name is Carmina. She is the daughter of the woman who owns this island, and the girl who caught your eye when you disembarked."
"Ah yes. The girl I asked Sparling to, uh...."
"Procure for you."
Clayboro nodded his grasp of the situation. "Then you are offering me the photographs if I will have no further designs on Carmina."
"No, I'm afraid not. If I gave them to you, you'd have the upper hand over Sparling and would be free to pursue the investigation. The industry would be ruined and I would be blacklisted, if not murdered. Furthermore, once you had the photos you'd have nothing to stop you from getting Carmina. You see, I'm no more naive than you, Clayboro."
"Yes, that's plain. Then what is it you want?"
"My terms are quite stiff. First, I want you to persuade Sparling to call off the search for Carmina. Tell him it was only a whim, that you're having a great time, that you're quite content with your redheaded friend, or with Dana, or whatever you want to say. It must be convincing, though. Second, I want you to call off the investigation."
There was a long silence. The men had stopped on the beach and faced each other, gazing intently into the other's eyes.
Finally Clayboro said "And suppose I refuse to comply?"
"I will have those photographs published immediately. Frankly, the whole industry and you can all go to hell. You and Sparling may be able to work out a peaceful coexistence, but since the future of drugs doesn't concern me as much as the life of the woman I love, I have the power to blow everything up and I won't hesitate to use it. On the other hand, I give you my word that the photographs will never see the light of day if you go along with me, and furthermore, I will force Sparling to give you a bigger share of the take than he's offered you so far. I intend to say the same things to him as I've just told you. He'll have no choice about it, and neither do you."
"You do play rough, don't you?"
"Yes. And for keeps. Now, what do you say?" Vic's heart pounded furiously, and even the strong wind that had whipped up after sunset wasn't enough to dry the sweat on his face and neck.
Clayboro paused, and then offered his hand. "I must say you've done some mighty shrewd horse trading, Vic. You have me. Let's shake on it."
Their hands met and closed around each other firmly. Then the two men turned around and headed back to the hotel. The moon was up, casting a silver light on the sea and the island, throwing the men into black relief.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was something strange about the hotel as they approached it. The patio, normally buzzing with activity, was deserted, and the dining room, usually lit until late in the evening as people relaxed and lingered after dinner, was dark, except for a grey flickering light. All was silent, but suddenly there was a gruff voice followed by a burst of laughter. It came from the dining room. Then another remark, which they couldn't make out, and another outburst.
"What do you suppose that is?" Clayboro asked. There was a tone of genuine friendliness and respect for Vic in his voice as if the battle was over, Clayboro the vanquished, and their forces united.
"I don't ... of course I do. Those are the films. They're showing them in the dining room."
"Films?"
"Yes, you know, art movies."
Clayboro laughed. "I take it the art is love in this case."
"I'm not sure you could call it love, but the actors and actresses go through the same motions. Let's go watch, shall we?"
Clayboro held up his hand. "I'm afraid not. Those things never interested me."
"Possibly not," Vic replied as they entered the empty lobby, "but I think you ought to put in an appearance and at least look as if you're enjoying yourself."
Clayboro looked half amused and half annoyed. "In other words, our pact goes into effect as of now."
"Yes, but I'm sure you'll find this one of the pleasanter aspects of it."
"I doubt it. But as long as they're not showing movies of me in bed I suppose it won't be as bad as all that." He stopped in his tracks and added, only partly as a joke. "They're not of me, are they?"
"What do you think I am, unethical?" Vic said ironically.
"Something like that," his companion answered.
They headed towards the dining room, and the scene they found there was rather interesting. The tables and chairs had all been moved to the walls and a number of couches and chaise lounges brought in from the lobby and patio. Couples were sitting and lying on them, and several more were on the floor. Most of them were facing the screen, but a few had already lost interest and were squirming around in each other's arms. Standing near the entrance, working the camera, was Antoine Theodore. His white brows rippled ominously when he spied Vic.
Sparling was propped up against the rear wall, his dark playmate stretched out on her back across his legs. She was wearing a loose skirt pulled high up over her thighs and a filmy top completely open to the waist, exposing her magnificent breasts almost completely. Sparling had a hand on her stomach but pulled it away modestly when he caught Vic smiling at him. He looked at the combination of Vic and Sparling, and Vic gave him the high sign. Sparling's lips pursed, as though he was assured that something good had happened between Vic and Clayboro, but was curious to know what. Vic's expression indicated he'd tell him as soon as they were alone, and his boss nodded.
Dana was seated on a long couch with Felice. When she noticed Vic with Clayboro she looked distressed. She must have been wondering why Clayboro was still on the island. Vic didn't want to go over there, knowing the unpleasant task he had to perform later tonight, telling her that it was all a lie, that it was all over between them. But there wasn't too much choice, especially since Clayboro's Felice was beckoning to her partner and Clayboro was returning the signal. Again Vic gave an indication, this time to Dana, that explanations would be made later on, but nothing was wrong. Dana shrugged her shoulders in an if-you-say-so way.
The two men made their way over several couples who were in various stages of undress, and sat down beside their respective women, Vic between Dana and Felice. "Have we missed much?" he asked in a whisper.
"No, they began just a minute ago," Dana said, snuggling up against him. "There was a little hankypanky in the swimming pool, and she invited him to follow it up in her motel room."
They looked up at the screen. A stunning girl, who couldn't have been much older than twenty, was mixing a drink for a handsome blond youth sitting on the bed. They were both in wet bathing suits. Hers was a one-piece job with a thin string around the neck holding the top up. The wool suit clung to her figure as if it were a second skin, showing beautifully molded buttocks and large, high, breasts. Her blonde hair was wet, hung down in strings over her shoulders.
She handed him his drink and went to her dresser. She picked up a towel, covered her head with it and began drying her hair. He put his drink on the night table and went up behind her.
"Sneak attack!" yelled somebody in the audience, and there were a few snickers. Next to Vic, Felice was lying down in Clayboro's arms and stretching her legs out. They pressed against his knees and he obligingly put his hands under her calves and put her legs up on his lap. They were smooth and well muscled. He put his hand on her knee. She looked at him and smiled. On his other side Dana was rubbing her hand over his chest.
In the film the young man was putting his fingers to the string around the girl's neck. The title was 'If I dood it, I get a lickin!' More guffaws. The title following was T dood it,' and he pulled the string. He pulled the top of her suit down and her spongy breasts were freed. They were larger even than the suit had hinted. The camera panned in for a closeup of them, coming in on her large nipples.
Dana pressed her breasts against him and began to unbutton her blouse. When it was completely open she pulled it out of her skirt. Turning her back to Vic, she raised the blouse above the band of her brassierre. With his left hand he fumbled with the clasp. He couldn't use his other hand because it was occupied. It was sliding up between Felice's thighs. He finally got the bra unhooked and pushed the straps over Dana's shoulders. She sat back and he put his arm around her and covered her breast with his hand. He caressed the flexible mounds and Dana began to purr.
Back to the movie: the man was pulling the suit down and when it was at her feet she stepped out of it. Her hair was dry and she removed the towel. When she saw she was naked she gave a look of surprise. Everybody laughed at the title: 'She didn't know what's coming off.' She looked at her partner's body, began kissing him hard on the mouth and tugged at the suit. Her title was 'It's hard to get this off.' His was 'You're making it hard."
Finally she got it down and he kicked it away. She caressed him admiringly and they got on the bed. She let her legs hang over the side. His body covered hers. They began to move rhythmically. She stretched her arms out and he pinned them down with his hands. Closeups of their faces showed mounting ecstasy.
"That gives me ideas," murmured Dana, unbuttoning her skirt and pulling down the zipper at the side. She removed his hand from her breast and placed it under the elastic of her panties. It found moist, warm flesh. So did his other hand, as Felice let one leg slide off his lap. Vic looked over at Clayboro. He was asleep. Felice nodded languidly.
In the film the couple's rhythm was increasing, faster and faster. The camera panned in on her face. It was tense, her teeth grinding, her eyes rolling. Closeups of their bodies revealed their intimacy to its fullest extent. Then they stopped for a moment, he moved away and rested on his back. 'You're not through, are you?' was the caption.
She kneeled over him and let her huge, firm breasts rest on his face. He began placing deep kisses over each nipple until they were once again extended. Then she began to caress his body with the tips of those lush mounds, first his chest, then, his stomach....
* * *
Then the couple went back to the bed, he dumped her on it unceremoniously. She looked up at him with surprise. She shied away, shook her head vigorously. He looked at her with anger and frustration. 'Prude!' was the caption.
The three of them ... Clayboro, Felice, and Vic, continued caressing their partners until their exertions left them limp and exhausted, panting and sweating profusely, just as the words 'The End' flashed on the screen, superimposed over two blissful people sleeping in one big happy bed.
Antoine Theodore announced that the movie was over.
It came as a surprise to practically everybody.
He was considerate enough to leave the lights off for ten minutes while everybody reluctantly, rearranged his (or her) clothes. At least two dozen matches were struck within a minute, and soon the pungency of the lust-filled air was replaced by the acrid smoke of cigarettes.
Buttoning his shirt, Vic found himself standing near Clayboro. "I guess you kind of missed out on the fireworks, being last man on the totem pole."
Clayboro smiled sheepishly. "Ah, but I wasn't. 'Some girl on the floor reached up over the arm of the couch, and the next thing I knew ... ' He shrugged his shoulders. "I wish I knew who it was, but I don't suppose it matters. Well, I think I'll go upstairs before the lights go on. I must preserve my dignity, you know." He turned around and walked out of the room.
A pair of arms from behind went around Vic. "That was a nice appetizer, darling. Now let's go upstairs for the main course." Dana pressed close to him.
"You have a tapeworm," Vic said, growing apprehensive. The moment of confrontation was soon to be upon them. He was in no rush to face her alone and break the news to her. It would be a painful scene, especially after he had committed himself to her with such seeming sincerity earlier in the evening. He felt like a jailer about to shut the sunlight out of a prisoner's life forever.
"I'm afraid this meal may give you severe indigestion," he said.
"I doubt that very much."
"Okay, let's get it over with.' He walked into the lobby with her and headed towards the stairs.
"If you put it that way, maybe we shouldnt after all," she said in a hurt tone. "I'll bet it was that redheaded bitch of Clayboro's. She had all the fun and left me to pick up the bones."
"Well, she certainly does know how to make love," he said, picking up the cue and hoping to use his sexual exhaustion as a way of postponing the inevitable.
"Well! I like that! Listen, when it comes to making love she's like a Model T to my Thunderbird. Come on upstairs and I'll show you some modern, streamlined lovemaking." She took his hand and started to lead him up the steps.
Suddenly Sparling emerged from the dining room buttoning his pants. He spied them and hustled over.
"Would you people like to join me for a drink?"
"I could sure use one," Vic said happily, stepping back down to the landing.
Dana still held his hand and jerked him to a halt. "It can wait, Harold. Vic and I have something very important to discuss."
"So do I," Sparling answered, mopping his red face with a corner of his shirt. "For instance, who was that man I saw you with, Vic?"
"That was no man, that was Lucas Clayboro."
"An intriguing combination. I'd be interested to know just what it meant."
"Suppose I meet you down at the bar in an hour or so."
"Make it two hours, and then I want him back after half an hour," Dana said, tugging impatiently on Vic's arm.
"No, an hour," Vic said firmly.
"Chicken," remarked Dana coolly.
"Very well, an hour. But one thing I want to know now."
"Where's the girl Clayboro wanted, is that what you want to know?"
"Yes. Remember what I told you yesterday," Sparling said pointedly. "You still haven't produced her."
"I'm well aware of that, and I'll go into it with you in an hour when I come down. I'll go into a lot of things with you, Harold. I'm sure you'll be happy to hear some of them and not so happy to hear some others. But as for the girl, I can tell you that Clayboro lost interest in her. He told me so himself. He doesn't want her any more, so I want you to call off your hounds, including that slob Antoine Theodore."
There was a resolute sharpness to his tone that indicated he meant business.
"Well, if you have a satisfactory explanation...."
"I don't know if you'll be satisfied with it or not, but you'll know everything as soon as I come down. Now if you'll excuse us."
They turned their backs on him and proceeded up the stairs. Vic felt like Ulysses between Scylla and Charybdis. There was messy business to be done upstairs, messy business when he came down.
But he was big enough to get through.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At ten o'clock the door of Dana's room shut behind them.
At ten o'clock and one minute she was lying on the bed, totally naked, stretched out sensually, holding her arms out to Vic.
"You don't waste any time, do you?"
"The people who waste time are the kind who don't know what they want. I know what I want. Therefore...." She beckoned him again. "Come to me."
Vic leaned against a dresser. "You know, a little while back-it seems like years-we talked about what we want and how to get it."
Realizing she had no choice but to bide her time, she rolled over on her side and rested on her elbow. "Yes. You seemed a little confused about that, I remember. But you've changed, Vic. I mean, just the way you spoke to Sparling a minute ago. You didn't take any nonsense from him. In fact, you gave it out. I felt thrilled to hear you talk that way. It's as if you've grown up, found yourself."
"Yes, Dana, that pretty well sums it up. I've learned who I am and what I want and how to go about getting it. And when I knew what I wanted I let nothing stand in my way." He felt the need to turn away from her as he spoke, but it wouldn't be right. There was no turning way from issues any more. Directness was the most effective path, both for him and the other party, whoever it might be. He looked her squarely in the eye. "I learned that from you."
"Glad to be of help to you," she said ironically. She was looking at him with a shadow of suspicion in her expression.
"But I wonder if you know what I've really wanted. If you ever knew."
"You're speaking strangely, Vic. I feel as if I knew a minute ago, but now I'm not so sure."
"The trouble with you is, you're so strong-willed you think that what you want is what everybody else wants. You've wanted to believe in me so much that you've forgotten my needs and made them simply an extension of your own."
Her face became more serious still. The muscles on her sleek body started to grow tense. "I don't think that's such a crime. I've needed you desperately, Vic. More than anything I've ever known. Can you blame me for believing one or two things about you that weren't so, just because I wanted to believe them?"
"No, I guess not. But I'm not talking about little things."
"Thai's becoming obvious. So they're big things. Okay, what are they, and how big?"
Vic gathered up his wits. He had been prepared to be direct, but the directness of her own question came with breathtaking suddenness. Well, this was it. The heart of the matter. Out with it and be done.
"I don't love you. I don't have any intention of marrying you. I love somebody else-Carmina-and I intend to marry her and bring her back to the States."
She didn't budge an inch. Not a muscle wavered.
She just closed her eyes and let the tears flow freely down her face. She cried that way for a minute. Then she lay back and covered her face with a pillow, smothering a sob. Her breasts heaved deeply.
For a moment Vic stood by helplessly. There was nothing he could do to cushion the blow. But then the sight of her pain moved him to sit down beside her on the bed. He put a hand tenderly over her breast. Then he removed the pillow. Her eyes were red but dry. Her jay was squarely set.
"You ... you didn't mean any of what you said tonight?"
His silence was his asset.
"But why? Why? I taught you to be cynical, yes, but to be cruel...."
"When the stakes are high enough and the other team is ruthless enough, it's not quite so difficult. If it will make it easier for you, I can honestly say it gave me a lot of pain to do this, but I had to. I needed those photographs." He told her just what had transpired between Clayboro and himself. Her face dropped the further he went into the story.
When he was finished she was staring into space, her face a study in stunned grief, as if she had just been informed of the death of somebody very dear to her. In a way that was exactly the case. For all the good Vic did her now, he might as well be dead. She pushed his hand off her breast.
"That's all over now," she said. Her voice was as limp as a deflated balloon.
"I hope you're not going to chop our friendship off, just like that. I've come very close to you lately, and I don't mean physically only. I don't mean love either, so call it whatever you want. It's just that there's a lot of you in me. I didn't like you or that part of me that was like you. But since then I've come to respect it-and you. Can we part friends and remain friends?"
A steely glint appeared in her eyes. The soft vulnerability fled from her expression, as if the pain of loving, of baring her deepest emotions, were a weakness that had remained exposed much too long and now had to be covered up. "Friends?" Her voice was hard again. "Friends we never were. Lovers, yes. Enemies, yes. We used each other as tools, yes. But friends, no. The garment just doesn't fit me. At least not where you're concerned. For me it's either love or hate. I think you'd better get out of here now." She rolled away from him. "Okay. He got up. "But I can't believe you feel that way. I've come to know you a little better than that."
"Maybe you don't know me any better than I know you."
"I doubt it. But just in case I'm wrong let me give you a little warning. That photo you have of Isabela and me on the beach: don't show it to Carmina."
She laughed. "Why darling, would I do a thing like that?"
"I said I don't think you would."
"Well, you're so right. That would be a very bitchy thing to do. It would ruin your pure, virginal romance. It would disillusion this flower of the Indies. Who knows? It might even break up the relationship. But I'm not like that, am I? I haven't one iota of meanness in me, have I?"
"I'm counting on your not having as much as you'd like to make me think. But if you want to show her the picture, if it really gives you some perverse satisfaction, then go ahead."
It started out to be a bluff, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized something about Carmina. It dawned on him with profound feeling, making him catch his breath and lose track of everything for just that instant. "Yes," he said with strong conviction ringing in his voice, "you go right ahead, because it can't make a damn bit of difference to her. She's no longer a virgin, sweetheart. She's grown up now, and she understands a lot of things neither of us have given her credit for. So if she doesn't know about Isabela and me, and I'm not so sure she doesn't, then it won't hurt her to find out. She'll understand. I can make her understand. So don't bother showing her the picture. I just may tell her myself anyway."
Dana rolled back and faced him, her face set in red rage, her eyes flashing with frustration and fury. She reached for the ashtray on her nighttable and flung it at him. Vic threw his hands up but a corner of it struck him on the temple. "You lousy, mangey dog, you filthy rat," she screamed, jumping off the bed and flying at him with nails bared and eyes seething with murderous hatred.
Vic reeled from the blow and fell against the door. The knob hit his spine and sent a flash of pain through his solar plexus. "Dana, you're crazy" he could hear his voice shouting at the blur of naked flesh that moved towards him like a human hornet nest.
He thrust his arms out defensively and brought his knee up to protect himself. Her thigh smashed against it and she cried out. But it didn't stop her and she slammed against him with full force. He felt the searing slash of her nails in a dozen places on his arms and chest as they tore through his thin shirt. He groped for her wrists but only managed to catch one, gripping it like a vise and forcing it behind her back. She stumbled against him and her breasts were the only soft things he felt. The rest of her was firm muscle suddenly come violently alive, striking out blindly with uncontrolled need to hurt, hurt, hurt.
Her free hand reached for his eyes and he ducked, but her nails caught him on the cheek. He got hold of her hand. She put her head to his forearm, her teeth flashing. He let go of her wrist and raised his fist, catching her squarely on the chin. She brought her knee up between his legs, but there was no power behind the blow. It hardly touched him, went limp and slid down his thighs.
She looked at him senselessly, idiotically, through eyes that no longer saw, and staggered backwards, falling like a rag doll to the floor.
Panting loudly, sucking air into his aching lungs, he stood over her twisted body. She was on her back, her legs wide apart, her breasts stretched long and low as her arms over her head distended them. All the distortion which rage had given her face had drained from it, leaving an expression of mild, almost placid unhappiness, as though it were her natural countenance. Maybe it was.
He felt very sorry for her.
The sour taste of blood ran into his mouth. He went into the bathroom and removed his shirt, or what was left of it. There were long welts on his shoulder, forearms and chest, and two on his cheek. He threw the shirt in a wastebasket and wet a towel, applying it to the wounds. Finally they started to clot. He wet another towel and went back inside.
Dana's head was rolling from side to side. He kneeled over her and placed the towel on her forehead. She smiled and gave a grunt of satisfaction, like a baby who's just had a botle put in her mouth.
Then she opened her eyes. "Darling," she whispered.
He caressed her cheek and smiled back.
She gazed at him blankly and then recollection returned. With it a tremor of fear in her eyes. She put her arms around his neck and drew him down. "Darling, say it was all a joke, then kiss me and make love to me."
"Dana, I...."
"Say it, Vic. Tell me you didn't mean it." Her arms were strong, demanding."
"No, Dana, it's all over. If you're all right now I'll be going."
"You ... you can't go, you can't. I need you, Vic, I can't live without you. Don't go," she cried, "oh please don't go." She clung to him, embraced him, kissed him as she sobbed hysterically.
He removed her hands from his neck and pushed her away. She made no effort to resist. It was indeed all over. She knew it.
"Don't leave me," she repeated like someone muttering a magic formula she knew had no power.
He stood up and walked to the door. "Goodbye, Dana," was all he could say.
"Don't leave me," she said again, her voice wrung dry of all feeling.
He closed the door behind him and went to his room, put on a new shirt and cleaned up the marks on his face as best he could. He went to his dresser and poured himself a shot of rum. It seared his throat and stomach, but he took another and it went down easier.
Then he combed his hair, shut off the light, went down the stairs to the lobby and headed for the bar. He found Sparling sitting alone over a drink, and looking just a bit morose.
"You said an hour," he remarked, delivering each word like a sharp rap on the knuckles. "That's what I said."
"That was an hour and a half ago."
"I wasn't paying attention to the time."
"You haven't been paying much attention to anything of importance."
"Appearances are deceiving. Let's go somewhere private. I have a number of things to tell you."
"You make it sound as if this is going to be a one-way-discussion," Sparling said resentfully. "I have some things to tell you too, you know."
"I know," Vic replied, "but I'm not particularly interested in hearing them."
They left the bar, Sparling jogging along by Vic's side. Vic strode confidently. He had good reason to be confident. The worst was behind him. He'd dictated his terms to Clayboro and Dana. Sparling would swallow them too.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Standing on the pier, looking at the last wisp of white smoke on the horizon, Vic chuckled. The two women beside him glanced up at him. "What is so funny?" asked the younger one.
He held her around the waist and smiled down at her sweet face. "Oh, you wouldn't understand, but I was thinking of a phrase from a hundred travel movies I've seen. It goes like this: 'And as they sailed off into the sunset ... ' Only that usually goes with a happy ending. I don't think too many people on that yacht are very happy. The women are battered, the men hung over, and the principals in the drama pretty dissatisfied with the deals they got."
The older woman, Isabela, nodded. "But the natives are happy," she said.
"Yes, things worked out pretty well here. Antoine has what amounts to a new hotel, and when word gets around he'll probably have a good little tourist business going once again."
"It will be good for me too. It will make life meaningful for me here again," said Isabela. "But I will miss you both."
"We'll be back every year or so,' Vic said. "As paying guests, of course."
"Oh no. We will pick up the bills."
He kissed her on her smooth cheek. "We'll see."
"You will go back to work for Sparling?" Isabela asked.
"I may or I may not," Vic answered, shrugging his shoulders. "It depends on what he offers me. He's obliged to take me back, of course. He's afraid to let me go with what I have on him. By the way, do you have the photographs?"
She went to the boathouse, reached up to a rafter and produced a parcel. She returned and handed it to him.
"Fine. And now we must go. On to Cat Island, and from there by plane to Nassau, and from there, home. Goodbye, Isabela. You have been very good to me-and for me."
"Goodbye, Vic. Take good care of her. I know you will be good to each other." She embraced him, and then Carmina, who held her mother very closely for a long moment.
Then they stepped into the shabby launch run by the gaunt West Indian and his son, paid him twenty dollah in advance, and pulled away from Topaz.
Isabela waved until they were out of sight. "And as they sailed off into the sunset," she said to no one in particular, a tinge of sadness in her voice.
