18mm Blues (50 page)

“Not entirely,” Julia replied.

Then, from Paulette, came a string of non sequiturs. Such as a confession that she was extravagantly interested in herself—she wished she'd have a day added to her life for every time she'd promised an admirer, male or female, that she'd phone the following day and hadn't—why was it she was ashamed of being unhappy? Didn't she deserve her fair portion of desolation?

Meanwhile she was slipping out of, pulling down, unbuttoning, mistreating one button with haste, tenderly urging the next through its hole. She didn't take off her high heels, knew better than to divest herself of those helpers. Her rings were the last to go. They all cooperated except the large emerald on her second finger. “I always have trouble getting this one off,” she said as she twisted and tugged it and momentarily gave up on it.

She pulled open the drawer of the bedside cabinet, carelessly dropped the other rings in and left the drawer open.

In the drawer, Julia noticed, was the black of a small-caliber automatic pistol and the tan of the chamois sack containing the pearls. Lesage had placed the sack in that drawer, had brought the pearls along for starters, he'd said, to throw into the yield before they'd even opened an oyster. Generous of him, he'd been told.

Paulette got two kimonos from the closet. They were identical, of pale lavender silk. Substantial, slippery silk, at least eighteen mommes weight. She put one on, casually tied its sash and tossed the other to Julia.

Julia didn't catch it, didn't try, allowed the kimono to slide to the floor and let it lie.

Paulette saw that as a sign that Julia was having misgivings. Second or third thoughts about this escapade, perhaps even about her. The latter was unthinkable. “Don't be concerned about Daniel,” she told Julia, “he only talks a good fuck.”

Julia smiled a fraction.

Paulette believed she had Julia back on track. She returned her attention to the stubborn emerald ring, went into the adjacent head to soap up the finger.

At once Julia removed the sack of pearls from the drawer. Put them in her shoulder bag. Stepped noiselessly out of the main cabin and locked the door from the outside. She went aft, up the companionway ladder to be on deck. She joined Lesage there behind the wheel. He was preoccupied with reading the green strobing buoys that marked the channel of the bay, where it ran between the oyster-bearing rafts. There was about a forty-degree turn in the meandering channel just then and he took it easily. He had the sloop running on minimal power for slow but sure going.

“You're obviously quite a sailor,” Julia said.

“I've done my share,” Lesage said immodestly.

“It's reassuring to know I'm in such capable hands,” Julia told him.

He concurred with a grunt, took out a pack of Gauloises from the breast pocket of his white flannel jacket and pulled one from the pack with his lips. Lighted it up. Usually when at the helm he was a no-hands smoker.

Julia pointed to a lever on the control panel. “What's that?”

Lesage told her it was the throttle.

She asked about other indicators and devices on the panel, appeared to be keenly interested, and he told her what each was, told her, “When we get out of the bay I'll let you take the wheel.”

“Oh, no,” she said brazenly, “we've better things to do.” And with that she went and sat on the aft edge of the cabin trunk, facing him about ten feet away. She could faintly hear Paulette trying the main cabin door down below, rattling it and pounding on it. She imagined the fury in Paulette's eyes, that soft dark brown turned obdurate. She reached into her shoulder bag, kept the chamois sack hidden while she dilated its drawstring and got a fistful of the pearls.

“This is a much better boat,” she said levelly.

“Huh?”

“Better than that old one you had, the one with the rotting sails.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lesage asked sourly.

Julia threw one of the pearls at him. It whizzed by his head, and went into the bay. He only barely saw it go by, had no idea what it was. Just something she'd thrown.

She threw two more, both missed him, and he decided she was being playful. Maybe she was on something, he thought. She had that detached, unpredictable look about her. He'd probably misheard that rotting sail remark.

Julia threw another. This one caught him high on the cheek. Lesage saw it was a blue pearl when it dropped to the slanted surface of the control console and rolled off.

“Crazy bitch!” he growled. He started toward her, momentarily forgetting he had to tend the wheel. The most difficult portion of the channel was coming up, where it was more winding and became narrower between sections of oyster rafts. The next buoy was a crucial one. He kept well clear of it.

Julia pelted him with more pearls, a fistful.

“Con!”
Lessage shouted.
“Va te fair éculer!”
He was seething, and when she threw another fistful he reversed the engine and shut it down. The most that would happen was the sloop would give one of the rafts a little bump, he thought. Even if a bit more than a bump he had to deal with this woman. She'd already thrown away a fortune. Paulette was to blame. If it hadn't been for Paulette he would never have gotten into it. He'd make Paulette pay, and this Julia woman. He came around from the wheel and lunged at Julia.

She easily evaded him, was up on the cabin trunk, retreating along it.

He vowed to his anger that the first thing of hers he got hold of, arm, leg, neck, whatever, he'd break.

At that moment Grady and William were working their way toward the open end of the docking shed. The overhang of the steel ramp four stories above helped conceal them, however it was only a matter of time before their adversaries went around to the ramp on the opposite side of the shed to have a clear shot at them.

They sidled along, pressed against the wall, not swiftly enough to suit Grady. He knew that by now Lesage's sloop would be at least halfway out the channel. Once it was out of the bay there'd be no catching it.

He could only guess where the tender boats might be tied up. He believed they'd be somewhere near the end of the slip, which with all their daily coming and going to and from the bay was the logical place for them. The width of the dock and the distance from the edge of the dock to the water prevented him from seeing if they were there. He wouldn't know until he got to the edge.

They made a dash for it. Grady leading the way, William right behind, turning and firing up to the ramp.

Bursts of bullets pocked the concrete close around, ricocheted and stung their legs. When they reached the edge they found no tenders there, but two were tied up back about ten yards. They ran back along the edge like conveyed targets in a shooting gallery. Anyone who was a half-decent shot with a rifle could have easily picked them off, however strafing and spraying, not precision, were the special merits of machine pistols.

Grady and William dove into the tender. Grady scrambled to its outboard engine, dropped its drive shaft and propeller into the water and gave its starter rope a yank. And another. The engine nearly started on the third, desperate yank, definitely started on the fourth. Grady twisted the throttle on the steering arm. Wild shots were still being fired at them as they sped down the slip and out of the shed.

Lesage was now up on the cabin trunk, stalking Julia.

He was sure he'd eventually get her, corner her and have his way with her. He was going to enjoy killing her and, he suggested to himself, his pleasure shouldn't end there. After killing her he should fuck her. And make Paulette watch.

Julia jumped down from the forward edge of the cabin trunk to the foredeck.

Lesage kept coming.

She kept retreating in the direction of the bow. She didn't go all the way to the bowsprit, held her ground short of it and defied Lesage. “Your old fat boat couldn't handle rough weather, remember?” she said. “That old beat-up black boat with the rotting sails.”

No doubt about what she'd said this time. It stopped Lesage, bewildered and distracted him so that when he lunged at her she ducked in under his grab and tauntingly proceeded up the portside deck access in the direction of the stern.

He continued to stalk her, hated her. How could she know about that old boat? he wondered. All the more reason to kill her.

She had no more pearls to throw.

She reached into her shoulder bag for something else.

At that moment she sensed physical changes taking place in herself. Sensed that the proportions of her body were being altered and that she was suddenly thinner, a little taller. Sensed that her hair was turning black and becoming more heavily textured. Her cheekbones more prominent, the shape of her eyes and the way they were set in their sockets, changed. Didn't she now have more forehead, less chin?

She sensed that she was undergoing mental changes as well. Somehow her memory was transformed, dilated so she could see inwards all the way to a small girl clutching her mother's long hair and the mother instructing her to take deep breaths and telling her to hold on as she took the child on an underwater ride.

Julia brought out the
dah-she
knife, held it up by its whalebone handle, allowed the moon to play upon its blade and disclose its razor-sharp cutting edge. “Buddha is generous,” she said. However, as those words came through Julia's voice box she knew it wasn't her voice, rather one higher pitched and delicate. “Is that not true, Monsieur Bertin?” were words she couldn't restrain.

Lesage became Bertin. For nearly twenty years no one had called him by that name. Hearing the name said further impacted his sudden terror. He tried to steady himself, told himself it was an apparition, not really the Japanese ama, Setsu, poised there flashing the knife at him. However, his eyes told his brain to believe it and he felt the blood rush from his extremities, leaving him weak and hardly able to take a breath, incapable of stopping her as she went to the stern, to the control console.

She turned on the engine, pushed the throttle lever to full ahead, waited a few moments to attain speed before spinning the hydraulic helm.

The sloop veered so sharply to port it seemed it would overturn. It pitched up and slammed down on the side of its hull and hadn't recovered balance when it collided with a section of rafts from which pearl oysters were hung and sleeping. It raked those rafts, disturbed them, scraped along the uneven ends of the heavy bamboo poles that formed the rafts.

It didn't stop there, was hardly slowed. As though it was a drunk bent on causing destruction the sloop caromed diagonally across the channel to ram another section of rafts. Plowed bow first right into it, causing the fiberglass hull to scream as it was abraded and the cross-hatched bamboo poles of the rafts to splinter and snap apart.

The collision sent Bertin flying from the side deck access all the way forward to the bowsprit. He made a grab for the headstay, the line that ran from the bow up to the masthead, had it for an instant, but his momentum was too great for his grasp, and next he knew the lifeline cut across the small of his back to flip him overboard.

He caught a glimpse of one of the green strobing buoys before he struck the water and plunged past the shreds of bamboo afloat on it. Then all was dark, wet and he was completely disoriented. Which way to the surface? He could only guess, and even if he guessed right he couldn't get to it.

Because of his white flannel suit.

Saturated, it seemed to outweigh him and it wasn't something he could just simply let go of. It and its weight had him contained, buttoned and belted. He'd never be able to get out of it in time. What's more, one of the trouser legs was caught on something, caught on the wire mesh of one of the oyster cages.

Going to drown, Bertin thought.

Among the oysters.

Julia was also in the water. She spotted his white suit and swam to him. Swam around him like a predacious sea creature, observing his struggle, enjoying his plight. She still had the
dah-she
knife in hand, was slashing the water around him with it, coming closer and closer, taunting him with his death.

Before she got to use the knife on him, bubbles emerged from his nose and mouth and he began breathing water.

No matter that he was dead, the need to slash him still had its hold on her. He was hung there limply, the current of the bay slowly moving his free extremities, his head alternately floating chin down and chin up. When it was chin up there was the stretch of his throat for her desire to open his flesh from earlobe to earlobe. She extended the moment, noticing with pleasure his eyes were fixed corpse-wide, their whites an eerie bluish-white, a bit fluorescent.

His head floated back.

His throat was presented.

However, Julia's hand that held the
dah-she
knife for some reason refused to supply the force needed to make the slash. That which had been providing it with the fuel of vengeance had all at once departed, leaving Julia so that she was only Julia with the
dah-she
in hand.

A vile thing, the knife. Julia released it abruptly and it spiraled, whalebone handle first, down the dark steeps. Only moments ago she'd had an ample reserve of breath but now her lungs were complaining. She kicked to the surface.

How grateful she was to see the night sky, the speckled heavens, and then Grady and William coming in the tender to pull her aboard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next morning.

Grady, Julia and William joined Kumura at his usual spot on the far end of the terrace. He was having a light breakfast, no Devonshire splits or any of that, just melon, toast and jam, coffee and tea.

When they'd taken places and were settled, Kumura commented on how rested they looked, how they must have slept soundly. “Except you, Grady,” he said wryly. “You appear to be a bit … how shall I best put it?… depleted, yes, that's it exactly … depleted around the edges.”