The Howling II

17

A FRESH BREEZE flowed in off the Gulf of California, bringing relief to the damp heat of the Mazatlan summer. North of the city, where the tropical forest pushed close to the shoreline, the Palacio del Mar Hotel occupied a half-moon of beach.

On the stretch of white sand in front of the hotel Chris Halloran lay on a beach blanket. He was propped on his elbows, eyes shaded by a tattered straw hat, as he watched a pretty, auburn-haired girl play in the light surf.

The Palacio was generally favored by an older, quieter clientele than that favoring the new high-rise resorts which had gone up in the city. Chris liked the older hotel because it felt like Mexico.

The pastel stucco of the main beach area was not much different from Miami. Beach or Waikiki. At the Palacio you could hear Spanish spoken by the fishermen who came down from the village of Camaron, and you could smell the heady aroma of chiles from the kitchen where the hotel employees ate.

Two of the employees walked by on the path bordering the stretch of beach where Chris lay. Roberto, a handsome lad of seventeen, carried a tray of iced tea for a couple from Indianapolis who sat up the beach protecting their sunburns under one of the hotel's umbrellas. Dancing along at Roberto's side was Blanca, saucy and pert in her maid's uniform, her arms loaded with fresh towels for the cabanas. The eyes of the boy and girl spoke intimately to each other.

Ah, young love, thought Chris Halloran as he watched them pass. Had he ever been in love like that? And once you lost it, could you ever get it back?

At the edge of the water, Audrey Vance stood barely covered by a pink bikini. Her slim, tanned legs were planted apart in the sand. She beckoned for Chris to come and join her.

Chris smiled at her and waved no thanks. Audrey was an actress who photographed like a dream, but couldn't act her way into a high-school play. Thus, her appearances on various television series were mainly decorative. Chris had enjoyed her enthusiasm during their stay in Mazatlan, but he was beginning to think it was time he went back to work.

Audrey struck a pouting pose and shook her head at him in exasperation. Chris tipped the straw hat down over his eyes and lay back on the beach towel.

A moment later, cool droplets of saltwater splashed on his chest and stomach as Audrey stood over him shaking out her hair.

"Come on," she said, "swim with me."

"I'm resting."

"Shit, you can rest any time. I want somebody to swim with me." She reached down and lifted the hat from his eyes. "Maybe I'll go and ask that beautiful young stud who works around here. That Roberto. I'll bet he'd come swimming with me."

"He might at that," Chris said, "but you might have a problem with his girlfriend."

"Come on, Chris, don't be an old fart." She kicked sand across his bare stomach, then ran lightly toward the water, laughing back over her shoulder at him.

With a sigh Chris pushed himself to his feet and jogged over the sand after the girl. While he was in Los Angeles Chris kept in shape with twice-weekly workouts at the gym, along with tennis and handball. Swimming, however, had never appealed to him. Even when he lived at the marina, he rarely used the swimming pool, and went to the beach only to play volleyball.

He followed Audrey as she splashed happily into the surf. The water was bathtub warm, and the waves were low and gentle. The girl swam easily ahead of him with long graceful strokes while he tried to keep up with his own windmilling version of the crawl.

Fifty yards offshore, Audrey stopped and waited for him, treading water. When he splashed up beside her she wrapped her arms and legs around him and gave him a big open-mouthed kiss. They sank together slowly below the surface:

Chris came up sputtering and blowing as the girl bobbed up like a dolphin beside him.

"What are you trying to do, drown me?" he said between coughs.

Audrey tossed the wet hair out of her eyes and laughed at him. Chris tried and failed to hold a stern expression.

"You're crazy, you know that?" he said.

She swam over close to him and slipped one hand under the waist band of his trunks. "Have you ever screwed under water?"

"Sure, lots of times."

Abruptly the girl's mood changed. She backed off and looked at him. "You've done just every damn thing, haven't you?" Without waiting for a response, she struck out toward the beach.

No, he thought as he swam slowly after her, not quite everything. Sometimes, though, it seemed he was trying. Until three years ago he had lived a fairly quiet bachelor life. He raised a little hell on weekends, did his share of womanizing, but on the whole led a life devoid of extreme highs and lows. Then came the urgent call for help from Karyn Beatty. Answering that call had plunged Chris into a night of hell in the mountain village of Drago, and had changed his life forever.

After the horror of Drago and the fire that destroyed it, there had been the nerve-shattering six months he and Karyn had spent trying to run away from it. When he finally returned to reality he had quit his job and gone into partnership with solid Walt Eckersall, who allowed him to take off two or three months a year. He had moved out of the swinging-singles apartment and rented a house in Benedict Canyon, where he could party when he felt like it and be left alone when he wanted to. When he worked he worked hard, and when he played he went to places like the Kona Coast or Curacao or Mazatlan. Sometimes he went with a woman, sometimes by himself.

Chris knew that his life-style was designed to help him forget the past. Most of the time it worked, but for some reason he had lately found himself often thinking of Karyn. He had never shaken the nagging guilt he felt for not going to see her at her parents' home after the Las Vegas crack-up.

What the hell, he told himself for the hundredth time. She got better, didn't she? After the way things ended, seeing him would have done nothing to help her condition. It could easily have made things worse. Chris put his head down in the water and stroked powerfully toward the shore.

Audrey was waiting for him when he waded up onto the beach. Her momentary irritation was all over.

"About Goddamn time, slowpoke. I thought I was going to have to swim out and haul you in."

'"Why do you think I was stalling?" he said.

"I thought maybe you were daydreaming about some old girlfriend."

Chris looked at her quickly, but saw she was just kidding. One of those unconscious intuitive flashes women seemed to get. If they ever harnessed that power, he thought, they could rule the world.

He said, "Do you want to go get some lunch?"

Audrey lowered her eyes demurely and peeked up at him through thick, moist lashes. "Do I have another choice?"

"My God, woman, you're insatiable."

"Damn right, big fella, and you love it. Come on, I'll help you shower off the salt."

They walked hand in hand up from the beach and along the wide veranda of the old Spanish-style building that was the original hotel. In the early 1960s, six separate cabanas had been built on either side of the main building, following the curve of the beach. Chris and Audrey turned in at Number 7, the nearest to the main building, on the south side.

An hour and a half later Chris lay face down, naked, on the bed. His face was pressed against the pillow, his body completely relaxed. Audrey moved restlessly around the room, her tanned body glowing in the light from the afternoon sun that filtered between the slats of the bamboo shades.

"Why do men always want to go to sleep afterwards?" she said.

"Mmmpff," Chris muttered into the pillow.

"It always pumps me full of energy. Makes me want to get moving and do things."

Chris rolled over onto his side and looked at her. "We already did things."

She dropped into one of the two rattan chairs and stroked herself between the legs. "Good things." She gave him a mischievous look. "I'll bet I could get you interested again."

He sat up and swung his feet off the bed. "No question about it, but first let's go get some lunch."

"Okay, spoilsport."

"Got to keep up my strength, honey. A man my age needs a balanced diet."

"A man your age," she mocked. "Jesus, thirty-three is really getting up there, isn't it?"

"Hand me my pants," he said.

Audrey took a pair of white jeans from the back of the chair where she was sitting and carried them to the bed. As she handed them to Chris, something fell out of the pocket and hit the grass carpet with a tiny thump. Audrey dropped to her knees and looked around on the floor for a moment. Then she reached under the bed and came out with a small silver object. She held it out to Chris in the palm of her hand.

"What's this?" she said. "I've never seen it before."

Chris's expression sobered. "It's nothing." He held out his hand. "Here, I'll take it."

"It looks like a bullet."

The tiny lump of metal winked up at Chris. It was a bullet, all right. A twenty-two caliber long rifle bullet of pure silver. There had been twelve of them, made to Chris's order by a bemused Los Angeles gunsmith. On the night of the werewolves in Drago, he had fired eleven of them. Karyn had fired the last. Chris had returned just once to the burned-out village, and the bullet had gleamed up at him like an eye from the blackened earth. He had pocketed the bullet and never gone near the place again.

"It's just a toy," he said to Audrey. "Let's have it."

"Another secret," Audrey said, sulking. "You never tell me anything really important about yourself."

"What do you mean, honey? I'm an open book."

"No, I'm serious. I know that little bullet has some important meaning for you. Why won't you share it with me?"

"Because it's none of your business."

Audrey closed her fist around the bullet and marched across the room to the closet, where she began rattling coat hangers irritably. "I'll bet it was a present from that woman."

"What woman?"

"The woman. The one you had the hot rocks for and was married to your best friend."

Chris studied the bare back of the girl as she sorted through the clothes hanging in the closet. Either she was a lot more perceptive than he gave her credit for, or he was talking in his sleep.

"Get dressed," he said. "I'm hungry."

As they sat in the hotel dining room awaiting their lunch, the conversation was strained and artificial. It was as though a third person sat unseen at their table, listening.