Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
It was one of those days when everything goes wrong. I should have guessed that the letter would mean trouble.
Paul Harrigan and I had been working in a swamp for the six weeks following my three-day honeymoon with Laura. It was a juicy Mexican swamp five miles west of Tancoco, about a hundred miles south of Tampico. Trans-Americas Oil, our employer, had a contract with Permex of Mexico to find, or try to find, new oil reserves. On the basis of aerial photo maps, Sam Spencer had shoved two-man crews into the more promising spots to bounce echoes off the substrata and map in detail any promising-looking domes. It’s a simple operation in open country. Harrigan and I were given a swamp. Every inch of the way had to be hacked out, and the equipment had to be lugged by hand.
It was one of those days. It seemed even hotter than usual, the clouds of insects shriller and hungrier, the black muck stickier. Wild parrots in their clown suits made noises like a fingernail on a blackboard, and even the orchids looked like open wounds.
One of the labor gang chopped his leg instead of a vine. We got the bleeding stopped and built a fitter and sent him on back along the trail to Tancoco with instructions to Fernando, our base-camp man, to send him in the truck down to the doctor in Tuxpan. Later Harrigan made a check with the compass and advised the world at large in a profane bellow that the most recent trail wandered off in the wrong direction.
Sam Spencer was using the mails to ride us about the time we were taking. He didn’t want us to finish any more badly than I wanted to be done with it and get back to Laura. I had begun to think at thirty-two that marriage was for the other boys, not for me. There had been girls aplenty, but it had reached the serious stages with no more than three—and even then there had been something missing. With Laura there was nothing missing. It was all there. And to hell with what other people thought of my Laura. We met right after I got back to New Orleans after six months in Venezuela. We were married that same week.
Harrigan was having a bad time with me. I did everything except walk into trees and talk to myself. Every time I shut my eyes I could see her silver-blonde hair, jet eyebrows, sooty smudge of lashes, sherry-brown eyes. I could remember so clearly the feel of her in my arms, the sting of those pouting, arrogant lips, every line of her tall, warm, wonderful figure. Laura Rentane—now Mrs. Dillon Bryant.
We were just getting back to work after the noon break when the boy came from the base camp with the mail. Two letters. One to Paul Harrigan from Spencer. One to me, on New Orleans Star News stationery, with Jill Townsend’s name typed in under the printing on the top left corner.
Whenever Sam Spencer used to call me back to New Orleans, I used to get in touch with Jill. We had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun. She’s a little girl—the top of her dark head reaches no higher than my lips—but her slimness and the way she carries herself make her look taller. Her eyes are gray and sharp with intelligence, and her face is out of kilter in a funny way, the small chin canted a bit to the left, the left side of her mouth and her left eye set just about a millimeter higher than the features on the right side. It gives her a wonderfully wry look. The paper had her on society stuff for a long time before, in her spare time, she unraveled a particularly unpleasant smuggling angle, got her life threatened, got some people sent to one of Uncle Sam’s jails, and got herself promoted.
When Laura and I were trying to cut the red tape to get married quickly, Jill helped us. Laura didn’t seem to care much for Jill, and that annoyed me a little because Jill helped a lot with the papers and also with finding Laura a little apartment in the Quarter. Then I realized that Laura couldn’t be expected to take a shine to someone classified as an ex among her new husband’s old friends.
I tore the envelope open. The sticky heat of the swamp had dampened the paper so that you couldn’t even hear it tear. My fingers left dark smudges on the paper. I wondered what on earth Jill was writing me about. I’d told her to keep an eye on Laura, if she could, because Laura didn’t know anyone at all in town, and because, if you don’t watch it, you can get tangled up with some pretty funny people who live in the Quarter.
“Dear Dil,” it read. She had typed it. “I think you had better get on back here. Laura is in trouble. I can’t find out just how bad it is, but without trying to alarm you too much, I think I can say it is probably the worst kind of trouble. I guess she should have gone to Mexico with you, Dil.”
That’s all there was. I stood and read it three times. I couldn’t seem to get the meaning of it clear in my head.
I think I tried to laugh. All I did was make a sound as though somebody had just cut my throat.
Harrigan stopped growling at Sam Spencer’s letter and stared at me. “What’s with you?”
I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I handed him the letter and walked away and stood with my back to him. I got out a cigarette and got it lighted on the second try.
He came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I skittered away from it like a nervous horse. “Easy, boy,” he said.
“Oh, sure! Easy! What the hell, Paul!”
“You can take the jeep to Tuxpan and get an airplane ride to Mexico City. That will be the quickest.”
“Leaving you holding the bag here.”
“What good would you be? Dammit, Dil, why did you marry her without knowing anything about her?”
I turned on him. “Watch it, Paul!”
“Have I said a word so far? No. Now I’m talking, boy. For your own good. Nobody could stop you. None of your friends. You had to go ahead and marry her. Women like that are always getting their hooks in the good guys.”
“Paul!”
“Shut up. That Jill Townsend is tops. Everybody hoped it would be Jill. So did she, I think. I’m trying to prepare you, boy. I don’t know what you’re going to find up there. I do know it won’t be pretty, whatever it is. Laura is an international tramp, boy, and the sooner …”
I saw my fist going out as if it belonged to somebody standing behind me. A big hard brown fist, with a hundred and ninety pounds behind it. Big Paul Harrigan is my height, six-one, but he outweighs me by thirty pounds. My fist went out as though in slow motion and I saw him just shut his eyes and turn his face a little and take it. It made a sound like hitting a wall with a wet rag. He went back lifting his arms to catch his balance, not quite making it, falling on hip and elbow. He sat up and there was blood on his mouth.
“I had to, Paul,” I said, as if I were begging him for something. “I had to!”
“A woman like that,” he said heavily, contemptuously. “A hard-eyed, sullen, discontented little …”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “You keep on and I’ll hit you again, even if you are sitting down. She isn’t like that, I tell you. You got her wrong, Paul. All wrong.”
He got up. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked at the bright smear of blood. He sighed. “O.K., boy,” he said. “I was asking for trouble. Come on. I’ll drive you so I can bring the jeep back.”
“Fernando can …”
“I’ll drive you.”
We didn’t talk. Paul drove hard and fast. Dust boiled up in a long cloud behind the jeep. I was wondering what trouble Laura could be in. I had wanted Laura to come to Mexico. She said she’d been out of the States too long. I pleaded with her and she said no. Jill found the apartment for her. On Rampart. Three rooms and a little porch with lacy ironwork.
At the little Tuxpan strip I lifted my bag out. I set it down and put my hand out. I said, “I’m sorry, Paul.”
He took my hand. His blue eyes crinkled as he grinned. “I’ve been slugged before and will be again. No harm done.” He sobered. “Do me one thing, boy. If Jill says so, Laura is in trouble. Try to keep your own nose clean. You get too excited. Just think before you jump. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try, Paul.”
“Let me know, hey?”
“I’ll let you know. I’ll see Spencer soon as I can. Maybe he can replace me if this trouble is going to take too long to clear up.”
