The Black Death Read online

  I didn’t push it. I gave her plenty of time. We were total strangers, this Lyda Bonaventure and me, and I had met her that evening for the first time. At eight o’clock in the social rooms of the HIUS. Steve Bennett, the CIA man, had set up the meeting. Now Bennett was dead and I had the ball and, at the moment, I was wondering just what the hell to do with it. One thing—I had to hang on to Lyda Bonaventure.

  I watched her, alert for trickery, and waited. I wanted her to make the first move, to give me a lead, for so far I was going by guess and God and what little Hawk and Steve Bennett had been able to tell me.

  She touched my hand. “Come on, Nick. Let’s walk down toward the river. By the time we get to Riverside Drive I’ll have made up my mind about you. One way or the other. I promise.”

  We crossed West End and sauntered toward the Drive. I kept a hand crooked around her elbow. She moved slowly. I matched my stride to hers and said, “What’s the problem, Lyda? As I see it you have to trust me. Who else can you trust? You saw what happened back there just now. Papa Duvalier is on to your people. You’ve just seen how long his arm is. What more do you want? Without help, my help, you and your organization haven’t got a prayer. We want to help. Oh, I’ll admit it is to grind our own axe, but it is still help. The CIA has been helping you. But now they’re in a bind and can’t help you any more and we have been called in. Steve Bennett is dead back there, with his head blown off, because of you and your outfit. I might be dead because of you. So why the stalling, the coy bit? Do you or don’t you want to go into Haiti and bring out this Dr. Romera Valdez?”

  She stopped abruptly, huddling against me and peering back the way we had come. There was nobody there but an old couple out for a stroll and a stray cat.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t talk about that! Not here.”

  She was very close to me and her eyes were a deep brown and filled now with genuine terror. I felt like a heel. This kid was scared to death and had been trying not to show it. Doing a good job, too. But I was impatient. I gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “All right, then. Let’s get off the street and talk. You want to come up to my place? Or any other place where you can go and feel safe? The thing is—let’s get started.”

  It occurred to me that, where she had been in such a tearing rush before, she was doing a lot of stalling now.

  She gave me a final long stare and sort of sighed. “Yes. I suppose I will have to trust you. It’s just that so much is at stake—so much money and so many lives and so much planning. I can’t afford to make a mistake. I only wish I didn’t have to make this decision.”

  I sort of clued her in then, nudged her along. I was beginning to feel a little naked myself, standing on 79th Street.

  I said: “You have to make the decisions, don’t you? Aren’t you the boss lady. The one they call the Black Swan?”

  1 gave her another little push. I laughed, not in humor, and said, “One thing we didn’t know was that you’re a female who can’t make up her mind!”

  A thought struck me then and I added “But you had better make it up, and fast, or I’m going to wash the whole thing and leave you standing here alone. On your own. If you don’t want my help, I’m not going to force it on you. Goodbye, Black Swan.”

  I dropped her arm and turned away. I wouldn’t have gone through with it, of course, but it was worth a try. I had to do something to get her off the razor’s edge and the real trouble was that I had no authority to arrest or hold her. Technically, if I took her into custody and held her I could be rapped for kidnapping. I didn’t want to do that unless I had to.

  It worked. She came after me in a little run. “No! Don’t leave me alone. I’ll talk to you.”

  “Good girl. Where? I’d rather not go to my place if I can help it.”

  “No. I have a place. A boat. Over there in the 79th Street Basin. We can go there right now. Only I don’t want to stay in the Basin, Nick. If the Tonton Macoute could find the voodoo church they might be able to find the boat. If we lose the boat we lose everything! That’s why I—I’ve been hesitant about trusting you, Nick. The Sea Witch is our cause! I, we, have got everything invested in her. Can you handle a boat?”

  I took her arm again and started her down toward Riverside Drive. Below the Drive the traffic flowed in a constant to and fro tide along the West Side Highway. Beyond the Highway the Hudson gleamed in light and shadow, broad and quiet and marred only by a string of barges being tugged upstream. Lights decked the Jersey shore and up at 96th Street the Spry sign blinked off and on.

  “I can handle a boat,” I told her.

  We passed a telephone kiosk and I resisted an urge to call Hawk and tell him what a mess I was in and ask him for orders. I had a feeling that Lyda Bonaventure was right. The sooner we got off the street and on the boat, and moved the boat, the safer I was going to feel.

  1 was curious, too. Bennett hadn’t said anything about a boat. The CIA hadn’t said anything about a boat. Hawk hadn’t said anything about a boat.

  Now suddenly there was a boat and she was acting like it was worth a million dollars. I thought that maybe it was.

  Chapter 3

  The Sea Witch was a Pembroke, a 57 footer, and she was a living doll. About $150,000 worth of sea-going express cruiser. When the girl said “boat” I hadn’t known what to expect—maybe anything from a skiff to a schooner—but I wasn’t prepared for the sleek glistening beauty that swung at double anchor a hundred feet out from the end of docking.

  We went out to her in a metal dinghy that had Sea Witch stenciled on the stern in blue paint. No one paid any attention to us. The Basin was fairly crowded, with a couple of houseboats moored close in to shore, and the usual scatter of small craft bobbing like ducks on the tide. There was a black-painted schooner in, a real beauty, showing no lights, and a steel ketch where they were having a party. The music was very go-go, and by the sound of laughing and shouting they were going to make a night of it.

  Lyda Bonaventure sat quietly in the stern as I rowed us out. She didn’t say much until I rounded the bow of the black schooner. Just ahead the Sea Witch tugged gently at her fore and aft moorings:”

  “Her real name is Toussaint,” she said. “But of course we couldn’t call her that. It would be a dead giveaway, you see.”

  She was calmer now, having cast the die and decided to trust me, and for the first time I noted the soft cultured tones, the absence of drawl, the almost too perfect diction that indicated that English might not be her first language. At this stage I knew little about her, but I did know that she was Haitian mulatto, descended from one of the old and elite families that Papa Doc Duvalier kicked out when he came to power. She would have been a kid then, I reckoned, because she couldn’t be over 25 now. Old enough to hate. Old enough to know what a double or triple cross was. I was going to have to watch her. And work with her. Those were my orders.

  We came alongside the big cruiser, and she went swarming up a ladder, showing a lot of textured pantihose. I noted, absently, that she had a very interesting behind. I hitched the dinghy to the ladder and went up after her.

  There was a jangle of keys as she went about unlocking things. “Let’s not waste any time,” she said. “Not a minute. Let’s move her, Nick. Do you know any place we can take her that will be safe? For tonight at least?”

  She sounded scared again and I decided to play along. Maybe she did know what she was talking about. In any case I knew I wasn’t going to get anyplace, or get her to do any real talking, until the pressure was off and she was at ease. Then, if I could get a few drinks into her, I might start making some sense out of this mess.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll move her. Just give me a few minutes to survey her, huh? You don’t just come aboard a strange craft and take off the next minute.”

  We went through the deckhouse and into the owner’s stateroom. She pulled curtains over the portlights and flicked on soft indirect lighting, then turned to give me a luminous brown stare. “You said you k
new how to handle a boat, Nick.” Accusatory.

  “I do. I’ve been around boats, off and on, most of my life. I still need to look her over before I take her out. You just let me handle it my way, huh? And let’s get one thing straight—I’m captain and you’re crew. I give orders and you obey. Got it?”

  She frowned at me, then smiled and said, “Got it, Captain. The truth is that I don’t know anything about boats, and so I have to depend on you.”

  “I was wondering about that,” I told her. “If you knew .anything about boats.”

  She moved gracefully across the wall-to-wall carpeting to a tiny bar. “I don’t I just admitted it. I was—I was planning on having someone else to run her for me.”

  I took off my jacket and my hat and tossed them into a chair. There was a blue yachting cap on a table, atop a pile of charts. The cap was soft topped, easily shaped, and bore two crossed golden anchors. I put it on, and it fitted me perfectly. A playboy’s cap, not a working garment, but it would do. I rolled up my sleeves. I had already had chicken blood on the London suit, and I figured that a little marine paint and engine grease couldn’t hurt any.

  Lyda was making clinking sounds at the bar. She stopped and looked at the Luger in the belt holster and at the stiletto in the chamois sheath on my right arm. She opened her mouth and licked her lips with a pink tongue.

  “I suppose I have been a fool,” she told me. “Not to trust you, I mean. You did kill two of them tonight! You—you wouldn’t have done that unless you are on my side—unless you are who you say you are.”

  I had shown her my credentials. I seldom carry credentials that a layman would recognize, but tonight I had. Bennett had introduced me as Nick Carter. Hawk wanted it that way. This was no undercover job—he was not even sure there was a job—and I was to play it straight all the way. At least until matters developed and the picture was clarified.

  Matters were developing, all right, but so far there wasn’t much clarification.

  Lyda had mixed martinis. She poured two now and wriggled a finger at me. “With the captain’s permission, sir, can we have one drink before we go to work? Do you know something, Mr. Carter? You look like a pirate in that cap.”

  I went to the bar and picked up the cold glass. I sipped. She made a good martini.

  “One drink,” I told her. “Then you change into something else and we go to work. And you might keep in mind what — you just said—I am a pirate when I have to be. I hope I don’t have to make you walk the plank, Lyda. For both our sakes.”

  She raised her glass to me. There was a hint of mockery in the gesture. Yellow flecks stirred and moved in the brown eyes as she smiled. “Yes, sir!”

  She leaned forward suddenly and kissed me lightly on the mouth. I had been waiting for the chance and now I reached swiftly under her mini-skirt, my fingers just brushing her inner thigh, and snatched the little pistol from a garter holster she wore high and near her crotch. I had spotted it when she climbed the ladder.

  I cradled the toy in my palm. It was a .25 Beretta with ivory butt plates. I grinned at her. “Now that you have decided to trust me, Lyda, you won’t be needing this. You let me worry about the guns, eh?”

  She regarded me calmly over the rim of her glass, but her mouth tautened and the yellow sparks swirled in her eyes.

  “Of course, Nick. You’re the captain, darling.”

  The captain darling said: “Okay. Now finish that drink and get changed to something you can work in. I’m going to look around. I’ll be back in ten minutes and we’ll move this hulk.”

  I went back to look at the engines. Twin V8 diesels, Cummins, and I figured around 380 horsepower. She should cruise at about 22 knots, with a top of 25 or so.

  I went on checking, using a flashlight I found on a tackle box near the engines. It had to be a fast job, but I knew what I was looking for and I was pretty thorough. She had a beam of 16 feet as against an overall length of 57 feet. Oak frames under bronze-fastened mahogany. Honduras mahogany and varnished teak trim in the superstructure. She carried 620 gallons of fuel and 150 gallons of water. You can go a long way on that much oil and water.

  The deckhouse was full of crates, long and flat, and I wondered what kind of guns they were. I didn’t have time to find out now and I really wasn’t all that interested. Later I might be—if those guns were to be used in an invasion of Haiti. That was just one of the pleasant little jobs Hawk had given me—to stop an invasion of Haiti if, and when, it appeared imminent. The old man hadn’t given me any suggestions as to how I might do this. Just do it. Those were the orders.

  I pulled the dinghy around and put it in tow. I had decided to slip the anchors instead of fooling with them, being so short handed, so now I slipped the stern line and let her swing around as she wanted to. I went back to the engines and started them and they began to purr softly in neutral. I found the switches and put on her running lights. She had dual controls, but I decided to take her upstream from the fly-bridge. I could con her better from there and I was still just a trifle nervous; a strange boat is like a strange woman— until you get acquainted anything can happen—and the Hudson traffic and channels are nothing to fool around with.

  Lyda Bonaventure came up behind me as I was studying the glowing instrument panel. She had changed to slacks and a thick cable-stitched sweater that muffled her large, soft breasts. She kissed my ear and I remembered the way she had touched me at the voodoo church, and it took some concentration on my part, even though I knew she was playing games and had figured I was a sucker for the sex play, to tell her to go and slip the bow anchor. She did know enough to do that.

  A minute later we were making it upstream against the tide, with the big diesels chortling softly and the wake coming up narrow and creamy. I listened to the engines for a moment and knew they were in good shape. I flicked on the white running light ahead of me. Lyda lounged near my chair while I explained about channel buoys and how to spot them and what they meant. She listened and nodded and came to stand behind the chair and stroke my cheek with her long cool fingers. Now and again she would say yes darling this and no darling that, and I wondered just how big a sucker she thought I was. We had gotten to the darling stage pretty damned fast; I wondered what she had in mind beyond that. As long as it didn’t endanger the business at hand old Barkis was willing!

  “Where are we going, Nick?”

  I was keeping my eye on a tanker coming downstream to port. “About forty miles up the river,” I told her. “There’s a marina there, near a place called Montrose. It’s run by a guy named Tom Mitchell, and we used to be pretty good friends. We can lay in there for a time, and there won’t be any questions asked.”

  “I like that,” she agreed. “No questions asked.”

  “Except by me, that is.”

  She patted my cheek. “Of course, darling. Except by you.”

  I spotted a channel buoy and slid to starboard. Just ahead of us the George Washington Bridge was a glittering arc with the white moving shafts of car lights shuttling and weaving a brilliant tapestry of nothing.

  I thought I might as well improve the quiet hours, milk the journey for what I could.

  “About that voodoo bit tonight, Lyda. How authentic was it? I mean was the goat really going to—”

  She was standing with her hands on my shoulders, breathing into my ear. I could smell that expensive perfume and the not unpleasant odor of dried female sweat on tan flesh.

  She laughed softly. “Yes, darling, that goat was really going to. It’s a regular part of the show. It is one of the ways we raise money for our cause. You and Mr. Bennett, poor man, got in free but those tickets usually cost a hundred dollars.”

  We were under the bridge now and edging into the relative darkness beyond. “In other words,” I said, “it was just another dirty show? Like the pony and the woman, or the dog and the woman, or a threesome or foursome? The sort of thing you see in the Place Pigalle?”

  I felt her shrug. “I suppose you could call
it that. But it’s been a big money maker, we screen people very carefully and we never do stags, just mixed couples, and we have been careful not to overdo it. About the voodoo—some of it was authentic enough. It depends on what you mean by authentic.” She laughed again and bent over to nibble on my ear. I realized that she wasn’t just kidding me along, though that might be part of it. She was genuinely excited, sexually aroused, and I could understand that. That voodoo ceremony, phony or not, and the killing and the blood, and the running and the escape to a boat on a dark flowing river with soft April in the air—these were all powerful aphrodisiacs. I was feeling them myself.

  Lyda perched on the coaming again, watching me in the dim running light. She squinted at me and ran a finger over her full lips in a way she had.

  “There are really three kinds of voodoo,” she said. “The real voodoo, which strangers almost never get to see, and the tourist voodoo which anyone can see—and our kind. The kind you saw tonight. Phony sex voodoo.”

  She sighed. “It was good while it lasted. We made a lot of money for the cause out of it.”

  I took a pack of cigarettes from my shirt pocket and tossed them to her. I have them made in Istanbul—very long and slim, latakia, perique and Virginia, with NC embossed in gold on the filter—and they are one of my very few vanities.

  “Light us up,” I told her.

  I watched her inspecting the gold NC as she lit them from the instrument panel lighter. She blew smoke through her straight little nose and handed me mine. “I’m impressed,” she said. “Truly impressed. And relieved. I’m beginning to really believe that you are Nick Carter.”

  We were past the Harlem River by now. I took her out a little more toward midstream. For now we had had the river to ourselves except for a string of barges over near the Jersey shore, moving like phantoms against the high rearing of the Palisades.