The Sunburned Corpse, page 9
Nina was giving Ira Garel the full treatment. He eased her along the floor, a little man with a strange gift for the dance. He seemed poised and under control as he slid with her. But Nina moved with something more than the tempo demanded. She had hips that squirmed and bounced and rolled. She had breasts that rose and fell with the excitement inside her. Her eyes were closed as she moved. And Garel’s hand snaked low on her beautiful posterior. Too low for Devoe. He abandoned the wren at the bar. He skipped through the dancers and tapped Garel on the shoulder. He smiled at Garel, the stiff and meaningless staff grin. But Garel only waved him aside. In the pantomime, I saw Nina’s lips move in speech. Then Garel bowed to her and walked away, allowing Devoe his wish. But Devoe didn’t dance long. The musicians ended the rumba series in a burst of noise.
Devoe led her to the bar, where she accepted a drink. I crossed the hall and came up behind her.
“Oh, lord,” Devoe sighed as I slid in alongside him. He had no heart for a formal smile in my direction. He lifted his pretty eyes in the direction of prayer and muttered a few words to his private god of frustration. “It’s our friend, the detective.”
“Watch your language,” I told him. “I’m no friend of yours.”
“Easy, Steve,” Nina said. “We’re all supposed to be chums. The captain wouldn’t like nastiness on his night of nights.”
“The captain can take a flying leap,” I said.
“Have a drink,” Nina said.
I had a drink. I had two drinks. On the third round, Devoe gave up his quiet struggle to outwait me. He drifted aimlessly through the lounge and I saw an apparition rise up from one of the soft chairs. There was a gurgling giggle and Devoe found himself face to face with the Fitherby filly again. It did my heart good to see him squirm and smile down at her.
We took our next round out on deck. We had two more in the chairs. Nina was well loaded now. She held my free hand and squeezed it playfully. She had sharp, pointed nails. They were saying things to my palm.
“Mr. Garel thinks I’m talented, Steve.”
“Mr. Garel is smart.”
“He says I have a decorative quality.” She laughed. “My work, that is. He thinks he could use me in his textile business.”
“Mr. Garel is a man with imagination.”
“You don’t think I have enough talent?”
“You’ve got plenty. You’ve got more than enough for two like Garel.”
“You’re being nasty.”
“I’m being honest. He likes you, baby. But not for your decorative quality.”
“Is that bad?”
She asked it dreamily. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling at something that stirred her to humor, something funny in her own personal world. Then she opened her eyes and beamed them at me, still a bit drunk, but not drunk enough to be insincere.
“I need your advice, Steve,” she whispered.
She needed me like a hole in her pretty head. Her glance was loaded with wide-eyed innocence, but behind the spark of naïveté something deep and meaningful burned. Nina Dunn was no amateur in the game of paw and promise. She had all the equipment for leveling a man. And she had used it before—and often. Even now, in the quiet of the deck, her probing fingers were lousing me up, telling me strange things in a way that no other fingers had told me these things before. Advice? She was heating me up to satisfy some deep urge in her erratic soul. She was telegraphing her warmth and her appeal. But she was sending no message to explain her yen for my counsel. She needed no advice in the department of bedroom bundling.
“Garel could make you a wonderful playmate,” I said.
“You think I want a playmate?”
“I think you want something or you wouldn’t be on this tub all by your lonesome. Not a doll with what you have, Nina. You rate the best. You rate your own yacht. Maybe a character like Garel is the answer. He’s loaded with what it takes.”
“That’s what you think of me?”
“In spades.”
“I should be very angry with you.” She laughed. Her hand never abandoned mine. “You’re brutally frank.” She got up, still holding my hand. She tugged me to the rail. And when I grabbed her and turned her my way and kissed her, the long fingers bit into me and she melted against me and her tongue explored my mouth with the smoothness and the skill of a professional operator. She clung to me, but not for too long. She shivered and released me, finally, hugging herself in the hot wind. “Maybe I’d better think it over for a while,” she told the sea.
“Tonight is a bad time for thinking.”
“It’s the right time for me.” She was unsteady on her feet, all the way back to the main stairway. “I’ll be better in San Juan.”
“I can’t wait,” I said.
She swayed and shifted with the roll of the boat, pleasantly lit but not out of control. I watched her cross the corridor beyond the lounge. She hesitated there. She groped in her bag for a cigarette and lit it and dawdled over it and made a big production out of throwing the match away. But while she went about her zany chore, her eyes were snaking back toward where I might be. She couldn’t see me. I was watching her from behind the deck wall, hidden in the corner of the passageway. She straightened when she found me gone. She dropped the cigarette in a floor receptacle, suddenly alert and alive and moving with fresh energy, down the corridor toward the bow. It was easy to follow her. She was walking down a narrow alley, all alone and in the open. I stood at the far end of the lane and squinted after her. She neither paused nor turned.
Not until she reached the dead end of the hall.
And then she paused to primp and fuss before a door.
Garel’s door.
She knocked only once before it opened.
Garel must have been, waiting on the other side, biting his nails. I saw her face light up with a fresh and meaningful smile. Her hand went out in greeting, only for a small moment before she stepped inside.
Then she was gone, the echo of her laughter rolling up through the narrow hall where I stood.
CHAPTER 10
The SS Rico nosed into San Juan harbor early the next morning. The city lay on our port side, a confusion of plaster houses on a hill, a variety of pastel-colored shapes that shone bright and sharp in the clean sunlight. Here and there a few palms dotted the shoreline, sending gay reflections deep into the blue water. After four days at sea, the sight of such tropical foliage sends shivers of warm anticipation down the spine of the jaded traveler. The boat was already a thing of the past, sliding and slipping toward the dirty dock, where a four-piece rumba combine blatted out noisy Spanish rhythms. The sound of the phony welcome skimmed across to me on the breeze. There were fellow passengers alongside me who oohed and aahed at the gaily decorated pier.
“Pretty corny, isn’t it?”
The voice was familiar. And so was the, body, close to my elbow and digging in beside me for a place at the rail. It was Nina.
“You look like something out of a travel folder,” I told her.
“You say the sweetest things.”
Her face gleamed fresh and vital in the sunlight. If she had pleased Ira Garel last night, if she had stayed for enough time with him, if he had used her body and kept her late, it would be impossible to guess it from the sight of her face. She looked as young and as fresh as a girl entering college. She was wearing a combination peasant skirt and blouse, an unusual garment for departing from a cruise ship. She would be at home in this outfit on any side street in San Juan. Something about the way her hair hung free and unfettered over her classic shoulders gave her the air of a casual townsman, a seasoned native of the area. She wore only a mild and pinkish lipstick over, her lush lips. No other touch of cosmetics decorated her browned cheeks. She tilted her head at me and smiled a thin and querulous smile. I showed her no warmth at all, and yet she held tight to my arm, as though we were newlyweds about to enter a strange bed.
“You saw me last night?” she asked the shoreline.
“I get around.”
“You were watching Garel’s door?”
“Are you asking, or telling?”
“I’m telling.” She smiled. “I caught you standing way down the corridor just before I went into his room.”
“Clever girl.”
“Don’t you want to know why I went in?”
“Two and two makes four.”
“You’re a cynic,” she said, her voice low. There were others around us, too close and too anxious to overhear what she was saying to me. I caught the flash of Mrs. Carrington’s gay hat, a creation of giant flowers on a wheel rim that would have looked well on a wagon. Jacob Quirk stood beside her, smiling our way. I gave him the edge of my lip. And Garel, why was he hanging back? Why did he drift behind the mob at the rail? In the bright light of day, against the pattern of sharp sun on the deck, the figure of Garel seemed suddenly stale and flat and full of nonsense. Amid the hurly-burly of deck activity, his worried face looked like something out of a comic book detective yarn. He hung back, close to a giant ventilator, casing the crowd with the eyes of a pickpocket. Now that the trip was over, I wondered whether I would see him again. There were things for me to do in San Juan. There were places to visit, places like Thaler’s and the Cosmos Gallery, and many another lead I would dig up in my search for Nancy Scott.
“A big fat Puerto Rican penny for your thoughts,” Nina said. “Do you still think I’m a bad girl, Steve?”
“I’ll ask Garel about it.”
“Suppose I tell you I went to his room to discuss a position?”
“Standing, sitting, or something novel?”
“Garel doesn’t talk to me like that.”
“He’s right behind us,” I said. “What’s holding you back?”
“You are,” she said. “For some reason I can’t understand, I don’t want you jumping to conclusions about Garel and me.”
“I don’t jump easily.”
“You already made the leap.”
“Not me.” I laughed. “Garel got the jump on me.”
“Garel hasn’t jumped yet. Not my way.”
“Sometimes a man doesn’t have to jump. Sometimes a quick fall will get him where he wants to be.”
“You think I let him fall?” She was speaking low, telegraphing her petulance to me by the way she snapped her words and squeezed my elbow every time she didn’t like what I said. “You think he and I got cozy?”
“Why not? He’s not hard to take.”
“I’m going to prove you wrong.”
“Why bother?”
“I want to bother.”
“Not now,” I said. The gangplank was down and they were starting for the dock. The sudden confusion swelled around us; the sound of the luggage skidding down the sliding ramp; the barked orders to the stevedores below at the cargo doors; the quick bounce of the tide of passengers, all of them aimed at the gangplank, gabbling and gushing their excitement. Captain Yukon stood at the edge of the canopy, shaking hands with each departing guest and smiling his hard and shallow smile. He still sucked a mysterious slice of his last meal. And behind him, Devoe grinned and gawked and made cute remarks to the crowd of cooing thrushes around him. He was avoiding my eyes studiously. He would stay away from the dock now, until he was sure I had skipped. A black eye or a broken tooth might mar his pretty pan forever.
“Will you be at the Caribe Hilton?” Nina asked.
“Sooner or later.”
“Make it sooner?”
“Don’t wait up for me,” I told her.
She blew me a kiss and walked down the gangplank. I let her go. There would be a short pause while she cleared through the customs line. After that, I would be on her tail. But Garel had other ideas. He slid in alongside me at the rail. Strom did the same on the other side.
“A nice dame,” Garel said.
“You should know,” I told him.
“You have good eyes, Conacher.” He nodded Strom away from me. He had a keen mind, this Garel. From the way my face was heavying up, he must have known that I was ready to let Strom have my elbow in his gut. I was mad. I was mad enough to spit, even in Garel’s direction. But Garel knew it. He said, “Don’t get your ears in an uproar, friend. I only wanted to make an appointment with you. Later. Where will you be?”
“The Caribe Hilton. I have business in San Juan.” I could see Nina down there, sliding her luggage into the long table. A grinning officer was waiting for her. She would be clear of the customs boys in a few minutes. If she made the street too far ahead of me, it would be tough to tail her. I pushed away from Garel.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Garel said.
Nina was in no hurry to leave the building. She checked her bags downstairs. She had an animated conversation with the man behind the desk. They were yammering together in Spanish, the little man’s hands whirling and snapping as he gestured and sweated at her. Nina stood her ground and calmly told him off. I couldn’t catch the import of her harangue. But I heard him say “Caribe Hilton” a couple of times. She quieted him by flashing a bill at him. The little native smiled and relaxed and swung her bags behind the counter. Nina marched to the door.
When I walked past the counter, I could figure what her argument meant. The man was lettering Caribe Hilton on each bag label. She had wanted her stuff forwarded by way of the checking counter. I didn’t stop to ask questions. Through the dusty doorway, I could see Nina legging it smoothly across the busy street before the docks. She was crossing into what turned out to be the old city of San Juan. And she wasn’t hailing a cab.
I drifted out behind her. The sun was as warm as a hot towel, a bath of heat that began to sweat me under my New York hatband right away. I made note of the fact that I would need a lighter lid. Even for a day’s stay in this town. The shade was a bit cooler, but not enough to close your pores. The old streets were full of pedestrians. This was the main dig, the center for shopping. A galaxy of stores made me gasp in surprise. The store fronts were as modern as Broadway or Main Street in any thriving community. The windows sparkled with all the latest in appliances; refrigerators, radios, television, irons and a variety of other items. I wondered how many of the Puerto Ricans could afford these luxuries.
The people who buzzed and bumped around me were in a great hurry, moving in their affairs with the same anxious motions of their northern brothers in New York and Boston, Pittsburgh and Dubuque. Civilization had hit this little island with a bang. Civilization had changed the faces of the store fronts, but it could never alter the finely sensitive features of the natives, nor could it ever do much for the old buildings, unless somebody passed a law to rip down the ancient architecture and start all over again.
It was an effort to hold my eyes away from the beauty around me. But it didn’t seem to bother Nina Dunn much. She advanced up a shaded street as though she had been born and brought up in one of these archaic hostels. She looked neither to the right nor left. Nothing in the store windows interested her at all. She was hell-bent for reaching a certain destination, and she knew exactly how to get there. She led me through a square and down a side street into a series of alleys that led up a slight rise. Beyond the filigreed iron gate, the shadows lay as dark as the inside of my pockets. Only a woman of great purpose, a woman of great experience, would dare to enter this vague hole. Nina entered.
I doubled back across the street and advanced into an empty doorway. I could see from this spot that Nina was headed for the rear of the alley. Her body bore ahead, a vague and pale shadow within a shadow now. Then she was standing before a door. A minute later she was entering the building.
Building? It was as though a mysterious door had opened from the dirty wall on her right. The artificial dusk back there was too dim and dusty for my eyes to plumb. I marveled at her sense of direction. I marveled at her skilful lies. She must have been here, and often, to ferret out this dump in a straight line from the docks. Or did she get her directions from the little man she had argued with at the checking counter? Nina Dunn was inside that building up ahead, involved in a date with somebody. Who? And when had the date been made? I pressed forward and entered the narrow corridor, goosing myself toward the door, but at an easy pace. If she was hesitating in the doorway up there, I didn’t want her to spot me. But Nina was not in the doorway. Instead, the sight I saw brought me to a sudden halt. A quick fillip of laughter rose in my throat. Because there was a little shop back there.
And the sign over the tiny window read:
THE COSMOS ART GALLERY
Please walk in
I laughed again. Out loud this time. Nina was only here to indulge her hobby. The humor in my pursuit of her made me feel like a two-bit hero in a bad movie. But the fact that she was inside kept me on my course. I wanted to tell her all about it.
So I crossed the street and walked into the Cosmos Gallery.
Inside, a man with a heavy tattoo on his right arm was busy taking down pictures. He had a big job to finish. It was a small exhibition room. Around the walls a variety of paintings were hung, some of them strangely dark and dull and depressing; others bright with the quick and electric color of the abstractionist’s art—brilliant vermilions and yellows; whites that sparkled and shone, even in the dull light. The place was crowded with paintings. It seemed to me that there must have been over fifty pictures on the walls, hung willy-nilly and lit only by the occasional lights in the low ceiling. All this I saw in the quick moment when I crossed the room and tapped the big man on the shoulder.
He finished lowering a heavy picture to the floor. He was in no hurry. He seemed almost determined to move every muscle in slow motion. He got up from the floor and stood erect, allowing me to sample the contours of his huge biceps. The tattoo on his arm represented a mermaid with gigantic breasts. The nipples shone with a queer crimson glow. This man had a cocoa skin, but his long face betrayed his Spanish ancestors. He glowered at me, his eyes small dots of black under his heavy brows.
