Get Thee Behind Me...

Chapter 3 Thoughts of Terror

There were just the three of them on the moonlit terrace. The silver moonlight, glinting on the waves, fought with the softer, more golden radiance from the two lamps in the main lounge. Cooper sat at a table with Carla. Alice was alone at a table ten feet away, her head down on her arm, snorting from time to time in her sleep.

Cooper took the ice tongs, dropped two cubes into Carla’s glass, added an inch of bourbon and filled the glass from the siphon.

“Thanks,” she said. He felt her eyes on him. “You’ve changed, Allan,” she said, “You can sit and be still. Instead of jumping about, pacing, talking.”

“Old age, maybe.”

It was a time for quiet intimacy. Cooper had steered the two of them into that situation. Billy, Bud, Susler and Barbara were playing dogged bridge in one end of the lounge.

“Why are you cooperating with Rocko?” he asked.

She had been looking out across the sea. She turned her head quickly. “Don’t be a fool! You crossed him up. Look where you are!”

“I came here on my own, didn’t I?”

“Which is something I can’t understand. You can’t get out, you know. Why did you do it?”

“Skip that for a moment, Carla. Who is back of Rocko?”

“I don’t know. That’s the truth. But I can tell you I don’t like it. This sounds pretty silly, coming from me. Scruples, I mean. Nick made it off bootlegging. When that folded, I was already into other deals. Slots, numbers, bolita. Taking it away from the suckers begging to be cleaned. Buying the law, buying my own protection, keeping my boys in hand. I always had the idea that sooner or later I could let it all go. Play lady. And, believe me, I was damn close to that point when — Rocko got in touch and planted Schanz on me. I don’t need any more dirty money, Allan. I’ve made plenty of that kind. And I’m afraid I’m going to make money out of what Rocko is going to do.”

“Just what is he going to do?”

“You tell me, Allan. I’m to pick up the next island down the key. I’ll be reimbursed. Rocko is coming in with a few men in advance of a bigger outfit. I don’t know who they are. But that island is going to be a base of some sort. Not for smuggling. You can do that a lot better down around the Ten Thousand Islands. As near as I can figure it, Rocko is working for somebody. He’ll be in charge of a base. The job of the base will be to fix up foreigners with enough identification and training so that they can stay in this country. I don’t know what for. Spys, sabotage. Who knows?”

“What are you going to do about Barbara?”

“Tell Rocko about her the minute he gets here, and hope he’ll play ball. What else can I do? She won’t go. I can’t force her to go.”

“Why don’t you try to block Rocko if you don’t like the sound of it?”

“With what? Billy? Susler? My three guards and two houseboys? That is a laugh. I’ve been cutting down the organization for the past three years.”

“Maybe the law would help you.”

She snorted. “You’re getting naive, aren’t you? For myself I wouldn’t care too much. I’ve been in a lot of tight places since Nick was killed. But he can use Barbara like a handle. And she, Farat, is the only thing in this world that means anything to me. Anything at all.”

“Then you better get her out of here.”

“What would you suggest?” she asked acidly.

“Go in a room with her and close the door. Put the cards on the table. Tell her what you’ve been and how you’re mixed up in this and can’t wiggle out.”

“I don’t want her to know about me.”

“Do you think she hasn’t half-guessed?”

“But she still isn’t sure.”

“Okay, Carla. Take your choice. You know Rocko and you know how attractive your sister is. Take a chance on Rocko, or else come clean with Barbara. Stop kidding yourself.”

“I might never see her again, Allan.”

“Wouldn’t that be a pretty healthy thing? For her?”

“Stop pushing me!”

“Suit yourself. It’s none of my business anyway. I just hate to see you making a mistake.”

He made her another drink, made himself a light one. They sat in silence for a long time. Carla sighed. “Damn you, Farat. You’re right. I’ve got to do it.”

“Then do it now. Get her out of here tonight if you can.”

Carla went to the doorway and called Barbara. The girl said, “One minute. This hand will finish the rubber.”

Alice snorted again. Carla said, “Take her and put her to bed, Allan.”

“What room?”

“The one on the right just this side of yours.”

He picked Alice up. She was limp and surprisingly heavy. As he walked through the lounge toward the corridor with her she slid warm heavy arms around his neck, looked up at him with bleared blue eyes, then snuggled her taffy hair close under his chin, burrowing into his nack. He glanced at the table and saw Barbara watching him with cool objectivity, as though he were some lesser form of life.

He turned her doorknob with the hand under her knees, edged through the door with her, dropped her roughly on the bed. He turned on the room lights and looked at her. She made a sleepy sound in her throat, shifted her position and began to snore gently. He closed the door, found her purse. As he had hoped, there was a pencil in it, an old letter. He tore a piece out of the back of the envelope.

He wrote quickly, “Miss Hutcheon. Please leave. In Sarasota phone 2-8883. Tell whoever answers that Cooper requests raid as soon as possible. At least twelve men.”

He folded it into a tiny square, gave Alice a quick look, turned out the lights and left the room. Carla was standing near the table waiting for Barbara to finish. Only three cards were left in dummy. Barbara was playing the hand. As she pulled in the last trick, Cooper leaned over and gathered up the cards and said, “Look, I’ll show you a good trick, kids.”

“I’m afraid I’m not interested,” Barbara said, pushing her chair back, “Thank you, gentlemen. That makes it an eight rubber. Somebody owes me eighty cents.”

“It’ll only take a minute,” Cooper pleaded.

“Shove off,” Schanz said delicately.

Cooper fanned the deck and thrust it at Barbara. “Come on. Take a card. It won’t hurt you to take a card.”

She sighed and took one. He put the deck on the table. “Now put the card back in the middle of the deck. That’s right. Line up the edges. Now give me your hand.” He reached out and took her wrist. Her fingers were cold.

He held her hand tightly, pushed the tiny wad of paper into her palm and closed her fingers around it. He looked into her eyes. She was so tall her eyes were only a few inches below his. He saw them widen a bit with surprise.

“Now by just looking into your eyes, Barbara, I can tell you what that card was.” He risked winking at her, and he knew his face had gone pale.

“What was it, then?” she asked, and he knew she would not give him away.

“The eight of clubs. Right?”

“Right,” she said without interest. “A good trick. You can let go of my hand now.”

He did so, and was relieved to see her shove her hands casually into the pockets of her slacks and walk with Carla toward the terrace door.

“You made a great hit then, buster,” Susler said hoarsely. “If you can play bridge, sit down.”

“His game used to stink,” Billy said.

“I’ll back it for a penny a point on the side,” Cooper said.

Schanz looked at him and pursed his lips. “Okay. Set game. You and me against Billy and Susler. Want the same bet, Garry?”

“You’re on.”

“You know the rules, Farat,” Billy said. “Cheat any way you want to, but every time you’re caught, it’s five hundred above the line for us. Cut for deal.”

Schanz won the deal. They watched him like hawks as he dealt. He picked up his hand and sorted it, said, “Two spades.”

Billy on his left said, “What do you know? I got twelve cards.”

“And I got fourteen,” Susler said. They both threw their hands toward the middle of the table. Schanz reached out with blinding speed and slapped Billy’s cards down so they could not mingle with Susler’s.

“Now let’s count those twelve cards, one at a time,” Schanz said.

“You win. There’s thirteen,” Billy said. Susler licked his pencil and gave them five hundred points above the line.

“What’s with Carla?” Susler asked.

“More pressure on the kid. But it won’t work,” Schanz said.

“Even if she levels?” Cooper asked.

“She won’t. Not with the kid,” Billy said firmly. “I pass.”

Susler suddenly looked up from his cards. “What’s that?”

They all listened. Schanz ran to the doorway to the terrace. He looked out, then turned with a slow grin. “Game’s over, boys. They’re coming in, twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. They’re blinking out there now.”

Carla came running in. She hurried to the wall, opened a small panel, threw three switches. The beach was immediately floodlighted so brightly that small dips and humocks in the sand made jet black shadows. Cooper looked for Barbara and could not see her.

There was a bone-jarring thud against the side of Cooper’s skull. His vision swam and his knees sagged. He turned and managed to make out the face of Billy, distorted with glee. Billy’s words of explanation came from a long distance. “Least we can do is let Rocko find him on his back, Carla.”

The misted arm swam up again and came down. Cooper dropped to his knees. He knew that Billy was pulling the blows, making it last. He tried to cover his head and the sap landed on his forearm, numbing his hand. Carla called out and he couldn’t make out her words. The next blow drove him down toward the rug and he melted through it down to a place where the sea had a hollow murmur and no night was ever as black.

Some white explosion of fear deep in the blackness drove him up like a rocket, bursting out into the light. He knew he was on a bed. He looked up at a ceiling, closed his eyes again. The light hurt them. He moved the arm that hurt and his fingers touched warmth and softness.

He turned his head then, opening his eyes, and saw taffy hair spilled on the white pillow, saw the straining seams of the pale blue dress Alice had worn when he carried her into the bedroom. The dress brought back all the rest of it, and brought new fear with it.

He sat up and stared into the face of Rocko Kadma. It was not the face of the pictures in the file. That had been a plump face, with the eyes set in comfortable pads of flesh, the mouth tiny and smiling and forever pursed as though held in by a taut drawstring. Now the scant flesh of the face hung in the bloodhound folds of the old stretched skin. Only the tiny mouth was the same. And the dancing glint in the little dark eyes below the high bulge of the naked skull.

Kadma wore a suit of European cut, spotless linen, burnished shoes. This was the man whose ruthlessness was legend, whose scores of victims danced forever in the deep currents of the lakes and the rivers.

He looked like the neat little proprietor of a neighborhood butcher shop. The slim foreign automatic in his lap between the plump thighs, and the long bulge of the silencer — they were anachronism.

“Go on, Allan, my best friend. Look at what you die for, my best friend. See if worth it.”

Allan reached for a cigarette. He froze with his hand in his shirt pocket. The tiny shrunken mouth of the silencer was aimed between his eyes. “Just cigarettes,” he whispered.

“Take out slow, my best friend.”

Cooper slowly pulled the half-empty pack out of his pocket. He took out the lighter with equal slowness. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.

“Hand trembles now, eh? Bad nerves, my best friend?”

“You want to play cat and mouse. Go ahead.”

Kadma bowed his head on his short neck. “Thank you. Thank you.”

The room door was shut. “What do you want, Rocko?”

Rocko looked through him and beyond him. The pursed mouth twisted. “Better you should have killed me long ago. I tell you about five years. Know what five years is? This my country. I come here when twelve. Fifty-one when I go. A young fifty-one. Now fifty-six. But an old fifty-six. You see that, eh? My mirror say it too. You kill me slow, Allan. Should have been fast. Better for you.”

“I thought you’d land on your feet.”

“Over there, boy, nobody is on his feet. Twice I damn near starve. Eat garbage. Sleep in fields. You think I’m gone forever, my best friend. Not Rocko. Rocko makes new friends. Rocko can help new friends. Back on top now.”

“On top, or are you taking orders?”

The little dark eyes went completely mad for the space of three heartbeats, so mad that Cooper tensed for the impact of the slug. Then madness died. Lids slid down to cover half the eyes. He said very softly, “When I think I die over there, I think about you. You and that woman. Gives strength, my best friend. Much strength to keep living. Someday I say I find you and talk to you. Like this. In room with gun and her. Door closed. A big dream, Allan. Dream for a long time. Nice to dream when it comes true, eh?”

“What are you going to do?”

Rocko frowned. “You know me. Twenty, thirty times smart fellas try to fool old Rocko. All die, not too easy. Even when they do no harm. You, you hurt me worse than anybody in the world. Anybody. So I keep thinking. How can you die? What way is good? Hard to say. I think of hundred ways. Where you scream five, six days before dead.”

A cold hand closed on Cooper’s heart. It was tragedy and comedy. In Burma it had been the fear of torture, not the fear of death that had finally broken him. He had found the Britisher that hot airless afternoon in the small clearing. The man had lived until nightfall. Cooper could still remember his screaming, thin and endless, like the cry of an insect in the jungle.

And he had come five years and fourteen thousand miles to face it again.

“Why laughing?” Rocko asked blandly. “Funny, eh?”

“Was I laughing?”

“You come here alone. Why you do that?”

“Maybe there’s something you don’t know, Rocko. Something important.”

“Old Allan. Always one for the bluff. Drawing two pair, betting like full house. Always.”

“What will you get out of killing me?”

Rocko gave him a puzzled frown. “What do I get? I show you. Wake up her. Quick.”

Cooper shook Alice awake. She smiled out of her sleep at him and reached for him. Then something warned her. She looked over toward the chair planted with its back to the closed door. Her complexion turned to an ugly greenish yellow and her mouth sagged. She romped onto her knees, completely sober, the words bubbling wetly on her lips as she pleaded.

“Shut mouth!” Kadma roared.

She stood there on her knees near the foot of the bed, her lips working, without sound. Rocko gestured with the automatic toward her as he looked at Cooper. “See the dronk thing? Ugly thing. Cheap thing. Half million of them around, all for asking. For that dronk thing and for one collection you do that to Rocko, best friend. Disappoint, Allan. Lousy judgment. No sense. Ugly blonde dronk thing. Not worth much trouble. Not worth more trouble than this.”

He aimed the gun casually. Cooper felt his lips form the word ‘NO!’ but without sound. Alice made a rusty cawing noise in her throat and the egg-blue eyes bulged. The gun made three separate sounds, like the slamming of the lid of a tiny wooden box.

For a long moment she stayed poised on her knees. Then she sat back slowly onto her heels, put her palms, one over the other, flat against the soft swell of her stomach. She made a face, such as a child with a tummy-ache would make.

The cords stood out in her throat and all at once her face was grey and tired and very old. “I — wanted a chance — to tell you about Allan — but you...”

The lid of the little box snapped again. The black hole appeared at the inside corner of her left eye. She sighed and toppled off the bed to her right, her head striking hard against the polished floor. The high heel of the right shoe was tangled in the spread, holding the leg twisted up at awkward angle.

“Dronk thing,” Rocko said in righteous disgust. “Better dead.”

Cooper tried to hold back the fear. But it roared up through his brain like a fire in a stairwell. He scrambled across the bed, tripping over her body, crawling into the furthest corner of the room, crouching there like a child avoiding punishment. He didn’t know what words he was screaming, but above them he could hear the long roll, the ripe fruity roll, of Rocko Kadma’s joyous laughter.