Perchance to Dream

31

It was not as dark as I would have liked. The stars were bright and a nearly full moon loomed over the black water and the motionless yacht. Blondie pulled the skiff expertly up against the landing platform. I could hear the faint sounds of what sounded like it might be revelry, though it could have been an ax murder in progress. The voices were indistinct. The calm water lapped gently against the hull of the yacht. I could hear nothing else. No sounds of sentries on the deck. I stepped out of the skiff onto the float, and Blondie pulled away without comment. I felt the reassuring weight of the gun in my shoulder holster, then moved softly up the ladder toward the deck. It was a balmy night, with just enough coolness stirring off the ocean to make everything fresh. The deck seemed empty when I stepped on it, but I knew I had seen someone in a sailor suit earlier, and I stayed motionless behind a bulkhead and listened. Only the sound of the water and the faint human voices from below. I waited. The rigging creaked faintly. Looking off toward Mars’ cabin cruiser, I saw nothing. It was sitting with no lights, behind the point. I couldn’t see Blondie in the skiff. From below I heard kind of a pealing giggle, much higher pitched than the other sounds, that had a chilling quality to it, like the shriek of someone wailing for her demon lover. Carmen! On deck suddenly I heard the gentle scuff of feet wearing sneakers. And then I saw him, in a white sailor suit, wearing a web belt, with a regulation side-arm. Just like the real Navy except for the sneakers. A little sleepy, bored with the endless circuit of the boat, he went by me without seeing me and continued on along the deck toward the bow. I went aft toward a hatchway and reached it and was inside, quicker than the passing of youth.

Below, the sound of people talking came more clearly, and I could hear the clink of tableware. I went down another step, and then another, until I could see the corridor that ran, apparently, from bow to stern with compartments opening off of it. At the foot of the stairs, slightly forward, a compartment door was open and from there I heard the sound of voices. I went down the rest of the way and tried the knob on the compartment next door. It turned easily and when I stepped into the dark room I knew it was empty. An empty room feels different. It was as I’d hoped. Like many boats, ventilation grates were installed near the ceiling, connecting one room to another, relieving the closeness of belowdecks confinement with a little air circulation. The grate was open. I pulled a chair over and stood on it and looked through.

They were all assembled, Bonsentir, Carmen Sternwood, and a tall, soft-looking guy with a lot of curly hair and big horn-rimmed glasses, who had to be Randolph Simpson. They were seated on cushions on the floor, gathered around a low table with an engraved brass top, eating with their fingers. What they were eating appeared to be some sort of grain with fruit mixed in. It looked messy to eat with your fingers, but none of them seemed to care. Carmen was wearing loose silk trousers and a silk figured top that left her middle uncovered. She didn’t from where I was standing appear to have a jewel in her navel. She ate with one hand and with the other twirled wisps of Simpson’s hair and then untwirled them. Clever girl, our Carmen. Never at a loss to be entertaining. She wore no shoes and her toenails had been painted blue. Occasionally she would stop twirling Simpson’s hair long enough to feed a small morsel to a yellow tiger kitten who would lick her fingers eagerly each time and then be disappointed in what he found and sit back and meow. Simpson wore a flowered shirt hanging outside of white duck pants. Bonsentir wore the same white linen suit I’d seen when he left Resthaven this morning. He leaned across the table and poured some reddish liquid into Carmen’s glass from a crystal flagon. She drank some and giggled.

Her eyes were very wide and almost all pupil. And there was a sick bubbly sound to the giggle that went very well with the faint medicinal smell that drifted through the vent from the room. There were silk brocade hangings around the room and a bunch of flowering plants in big pots here and there. Simpson was staring at Bonsentir, and it was his voice that I heard, deep and full of overtones, like a B-movie version of God speaking from the clouds.

“You are too powerful, Randolph, he can’t touch you. No one can. We can go on with our life as we have.”

Simpson gazed at him like the extras in ill-fitting sandals and moth-eaten robes would have looked at God in the B-movie. He drank some of the reddish liquid from his glass. Carmen scooped some rice and fruit off the platter with the first three fingers of her right hand and shoveled it into Simpson’s mouth. He swallowed most of it, let a little of it dribble onto his shirt. Carmen wiped it away with a cerise silk napkin. And fed a crumb to the eager kitten.

“He won’t stop,” Simpson said. “He keeps coming around, asking questions. He found the old mine.”

“He’s a little man,” Bonsentir intoned, “a little man. We will simply swat him, the way flies are swatted.”

I felt a small catch in my throat. They were talking about me.

Simpson’s high voice was a little shaky. He stared at Bonsentir, leaning a little toward him. Carmen ran her hand along his thigh and took a single grape from the platter and popped it in her mouth. She chewed it slowly while she rubbed her cheek against Simpson’s left arm. The kitten meowed.

“He found the mine. He and that nosy old woman at the newspaper.”

“He found nothing that matters. You have the force, Randolph. You have the power and I know it and can bring it out of you.”

“And the plan,” Simpson squeaked. “He’s been up to Neville Valley and he’s been to the Springs. He knows.”

Bonsentir took Simpson’s right hand in both of his and squeezed them.

“I’ll have him removed, Randolph. He annoys you. I’ll have him removed.”

“What if he told?”

“Who would he tell? The police? We own the police, Randolph. We own the mayor and the governor and the legislature. This is ours, Randolph. California belongs to you.”

They were silent, Bonsentir holding Simpson’s hand.

“Yes!” Simpson’s voice lost its squeaky plaintive trill. Carmen rubbed her cheek against his arm and her hand along his thigh. The kitten meowed again. Simpson glanced at it with irritation.

“When you sent the men,” Simpson said, “you told me they’d make him stop.” The voice began to slide back up to whiny again. “And he didn’t. And you sent the men to Vivian and she said he didn’t even work for her and even when they were hurting her she said that. And he wouldn’t stop. I don’t like that!”

“What did they do to Vivian?” Carmen said and giggled again, the bubbling corrupt giggle that sometimes I still hear in my dreams. Neither Simpson nor Bonsentir paid her any attention.

“He’ll not disturb you further,” Bonsentir said.

Carmen stopped running her hand along Simpson’s thigh and put her peculiar little thumb in her mouth and began to suck it turning it a little, this way and that, as if to get all the flavor out of it.

“Is it that you are going to kill him?” she said, her head still pressed to Simpson’s shoulder.

Simpson smiled at her like he was her grandpapa. “Would you like to help us?”

Carmen’s bubbly giggle erupted and sustained as she nodded her head, quite solemnly, her thumb still in her mouth, her big eyes as empty as a haunted house.

“Carmen likes that,” she said and opened her mouth and displayed her sharp little shiny teeth.

“I know,” Simpson said, his voice now low and calm. “And I like Carmen.”

She got up then and kissed him on top of his head.

“Carmen has to go to the little girls’ room for a minute,” she said and flitted gaily out of the stateroom, as carefree as a monarch butterfly. Simpson watched her go and then looked at Bonsentir. The kitten meowed and rubbed along Bonsentir’s thigh. He stared at it for a moment with distaste. Then he stood suddenly and picked the kitten up by the neck. The kitten screeched. Simpson took one long-legged stride across the room and threw the kitten out the open porthole. Then he turned back and sat down.

“Soon,” he said, his tone dark and very guttural. “I feel it coming on. Soon it will be Carmen’s time.”

“She has lasted longer than many,” Bonsentir said.

“I like to think—” Simpson said, the words oozing out of him like some viscous effluent. “I like to think of her face the first moment when she knows, when she realizes what will happen to her.”

Both men were silent, admiring the thought. Then the door opened and Carmen floated in again.

“All done,” she announced and plumped herself back down beside Simpson, and leaned her head against his fleshy shoulder. He tilted her chin up with one hand and kissed her hard on the mouth. She wriggled her little body, excitedly, like a fish on a hook.

I got down from my chair and moved to the door and opened it a crack. It was time to take her out of there. The corridor was empty. I opened the door wider and stepped through. I took the three steps down to the next door and put my hand inside my coat for my gun. Suddenly a steel cable, thicker than the ones on which they hung the Brooklyn Bridge, went around my neck, and a vise clamped on my gun hand. I could smell the owner, it was the Mexican. And it wasn’t a steel cable, it was his forearm. I tried to stamp on his instep but the cable around my neck kept tightening. I jammed my left elbow back into his ribs. It had as much effect as if I’d slugged him with a marshmallow. I could feel the pressure build in my head. I couldn’t see anything but a reddish haze. My gun and gun hand were still immobile under my coat. I tried to bend forward and throw him but it was like trying to bend an oak tree. I couldn’t breathe. The reddish haze got darker and redder and finally enveloped me and I plunged into it and disappeared.