Chapter 7
Vic stood outside Harold Sparling's room the next morning, his knuckles poised over the door. He was sure he knew why Sparling had summoned him, but not at all sure how he was going to react to the man, whether to appease him, stand firm, play dumb, or connive. One thing he did know, though, and that was that under no circumstance would he let them get at Carmina. Not, that is, if he had anything to say or do about it. He wondered just what forces he didn't know about were in motion to go around him and get Carmina for themselves.
Well, he'd know soon enough, and he rapped sharply at Harold Sparling's door.
"Just a moment," came his muffled voice, and there was a sound of scurrying. Then "Come in."
Sparling was in bed, naked. Standing in a corner by the window, looking as innocent as circumstances permitted, which wasn't much, was a tall, well built mulatto girl, covered barely by a filmy black negligee. She might as well have been completely nude for all it concealed, and all it revealed was very comforting to the eye at this morning hour. Her breasts were high and tip-tilted, with large dark nipples that held the negligee away from the rest of her front. She smiled sheepishly and fluttered her eyelashes.
"I hope I haven't interrupted a business conference," Vic said.
"Well, we were having an all night chat about the drug industry, weren't we, Inez?" She giggled fatuosly.
"Inez, why don't you step into the bathroom and get dressed? Mr. Brighton and I have something to talk about."
She shook her head and went over to a chair where her clothes were scattered. She stooped over to pick them up, revealing a superb pair of dimpled buttocks, and pranced into the bathroom, giggling again and winking at Vic.
"I suppose you know why I called you in."
I can guess. "You didn't find the girl last night."
"Obviously not," he answered with thinly disguised hostility.
"Did you try?"
"Of course I did. Dana will tell you that."
"Dana has told me quite a bit."
"Dana's lips are better for kissing than they are for keeping confidences."
"I don't know what makes you think she'd keep your confidences. Her allegiance is to me, not you. However, she revealed no confidences because she said you hadn't told her any."
"That's right. There aren't any to tell."
"I'm not so sure about that. She did mention she suspects a few things."
"Good for her."
"Would you mind throwing me my cigarettes? Behind you. Help yourself to one if you like," he said disarmingly.
"Thanks, I will." Vic took one, lit it, and tossed the pack to Sparling, wondering just what this gambit meant. "Dana did some snooping this morning."
"Good for her again."
"She found out that the owners of this place, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore, have a daughter."
Vic dragged deep on the cigarette. "Do tell?"
"Yes. Do you know anything about her?"
"No, but if they were smart they probably shipped her off to another island until we've cleared out."
"I don't know how smart they are. Mr. Theodore seemed rather shrewd, though, in the few moments I spoke with him yesterday."
"Why don't you ask him where his daughter is?" Vic asked, hoping that was exactly what Sparling wouldn't do.
"I wouldn't want him to get suspicious that there are any designs on her," Sparling answered.
Vic suppresed a sigh of relief. So far so good. As long as Sparling didn't know the unscrupulous nature of Antoine Theodore there was hope. "You seem sure she's his daughter."
"One of the natives you'd spoken to came to Dana today and said Carmina-that's the girl's name-answers the description you gave them last night."
Vic proceeded cautiously. "Okay, let's just suppose the Theodores have a daughter, and the daughter answers the description Clayboro gave us. So what?"
"So I repeat. I want her found."
"But dammit, she's not on the island. She's not in the hotel, she's not in the village, there's no place else on the island that's habitable. What am I supposed to do, snap my fingers and have her appear out of thin air?"
Sparling threw the covers off and got out of bed. He shuttled his flabby nakedness over to Vic and confronted him face to face. Vic's face was stolid, Sparling's determined and cruel. "Look here Vic, I'm in no mood for playing around. If Clayboro doesn't get satisfaction this whole thing goes up in smoke, and I don't intend to let that happen. There's too much at stake to let one obstacle the thickness of a girl's virginity hold up the works."
Vic flushed in anger and felt a deep surge of hatred and disgust well up. "I'd like to break your neck, Sparling."
"I don't care what you'd like to do, it's what you're going to do that interests me. Now I don't know what your claim to this girl is, and I don't care. I do know that you know where she is, and that you're protecting her. And this is all I'm going to say: find her or your future-with me or with any drug company in the world-won't be worth a plugged nickel."
The two men glared at each other.
Then Sparling went to his window. "Come here," he said. Vic went to his side. "Look down there. On the patio. I see about a dozen couples boozing it up, kidding around, having a great time. There's Wilton and Howard. Look at them, laughing away. Do you see?"
"Yes. So?"
"Now look over there, in that corner." It was Clayboro, sitting by himself, reading a book. "If that goes on much longer we've lost him. And I repeat, I will not let it happen."
"Sparling, you're' lower than dog dung."
"The girl, Vic. I want that girl no later than tomorrow. Or you've had it."
"I've just about had it anyway," Vic said fiercely, walking out and slamming the door behind him.
He stormed into the lobby, not quite sure of what he was going to do next. Dana spied him, waved and started walking toward him. He turned his back on her deliberately and headed toward the dining room. He went in and looked for Isabela. One of the waiters said she was in the kitchen. He passed through the swinging doors, and over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of Dana, standing hands on hips at the entrance to the dining room, looking more than peeved.
Isabela was preparing dinner, her face set in its usual repose. She hummed a Caribbean lullaby and looked up at Vic with that Mona Lisa smile, so calm and feminine and mysterious. It faded when she saw the anxious look in his eyes. "Something is the matter," she said, drying her hands on her apron.
"Yes. Can you get away?"
"Very."
"It is important?"
She called to the waiter outside and instructed him to finish up the work in the kitchen for her. Then they went out through the screen door and headed for their private spot on the west beach.
They sat in the cove's shelter for a few minutes before speaking. It was always so peaceful here. It was almost sinful to speak anything less than profundities. At last Vic said "I met your daughter and I love her very much."
"I know. She told me."
"And ... does she love me?"
"That is for you to ask her."
"That isn't what I brought you here to talk about." There was a rustling in the trees on the bluff above them. "What was that?"
"Probably just a bird." She put a hand on his. "You seem very troubled."
"I am." He told her of the development with Clayboro.
As he spoke the expression of serenity faded from her face as though a storm cloud had passed over it. When he told her of Sparling's ultimatum her eyes filled with deep distress. "I told her to stay out of sight," she said solemnly.
"She knows nothing of the world. She was curious, she had to see what was going on. It's not her fault. How was she to know she'd take Clayboro's fancy?"
"I have told her many times how corruption feeds on innocence."
"It isn't your fault either. You've done all you can to prepare her. No one could ask for more of a mother. But that doesn't matter now. The problem is, what are we going to do?"
"For me there is no problem," she said with determination. "Why is there one for you? I will not let them have her. Don't you feel the same way?"
Vic looked away from her. "Yes, but for me it isn't so easy. They've threatened to take a lot from me if I don't produce her. They've offered me a lot if I do."
She put her hand on his cheek and made him look at her "The first day you came here you told me you where not like the others, and I believed you. " She searched his eyes. "Now I do not know."
He pounded the sand with his fist. "Godammit, can't you understand what's at stake in this for me?"
She didn't raise her voice, but firmly she said "I understand all too well, Vic, all too well. Men have sold themselves for less than one girl's purity. The decision is yours to make. But let me say that it is not a question of how much you care for her. If you didn't love her at all the burden of this decision would still be as heavy."
Vic searched his mind and knew that what she said was true.
Her expression hardened, like a mother bear's who senses great danger approaching her cub. "And I will tell you this also. If you let them get her, I will be your enemy, and I will kill you."
It didn't come as any surprise to him. He had known from the first that this woman who was capable of profound love was also capable of the profoundest hatred.
He picked himself up and wandered wearily to the water's edge. The sea was more turbulent than the last time he had been here, pounding on the pink sand with a disturbing rumble, splashing muddy surf about his ankles. He stood a long time looking out at the endless ocean, thinking more deeply than he had ever thought before.
It seemed as if all the problems of who he was, what he wanted, why he was here, all the questions of identity and value whose solutions he'd managed to avoid and escape all his life, were now confronting him squarely and demanding that he make up his mind.
Well, what did he want? The rewards were spread out before him like a feast. Sparling was offering him wealth such as few men his age could dream of having. And prestige, because he would be something of a hero if the convention panned out the way the drug industry was counting on it to pan out. Carmina offered her love, like some delicate flower for him to cultivate. It was a love such as he had always cherished most deeply in that part of him that every man reserves for one woman.
Standing in front of each way of life, like standard bearers before opposing armies, were Dana and Isabela. Dana was making her play for his hand in marriage, with all the social status, good times, hot sex-and moral oblivion-that went with it. He had but to relax his grip, turn his back on the things that meant most to him, turn a little valve and shut out the nagging doubts, and she had him.
Isabela's offer was more simple and far less gratifying. It was her respect. But because she was a woman who understood him better than any person ever had, who really knew who he was in the core of him, her respect became tantamount to his self respect.
So much for the plus side of the ledger. On the minus side he had a great, great deal to lose, as if under that banquet table with all the goodies on it was a pack of ferocious dogs, and no mater what he chose he would be snapped at and bitten and possibly devoured by them. A vote for Carmina meant Sparling would break him so thoroughly he's never be able to climb back, even begin to climb back, up the ladder of success. And now he stood near the topmost rung. A vote for Sparling meant the destruction of a girl so beautiful of face, body and soul that the heavens would cry out with the pity of it. It meant he would be hunted forever by Carmina's mother, and even if she never found him his own conscience would hunt him and torture him and do the job for her.
The surf rushed angrily around his feet, and the surge of the ocean corresponded to the pounding in his skull. He closed his eyes and for a moment he felt as if he were a pinpoint grain of sand hammered at by the boiling rage of the universe.
And then he was at peace and knew what he had to do.
He walked back to Isabela, feeling a hundred years older, yet at the same time filled with the tremendous energy of one who at least knew who he was and what course he had to follow. All the dissipated motion which a lifetime of doubt had brought about was behind him. There would be no more waste. He knew what he wanted and could summon all his forces behind obtaining it. There would be a price, and it would be a grave price, but he was prepared to pay it. He was not afraid.
Isabela looked up at him, a question in her eyes.
"Nothing will happen to Carmina," he said grimly.
"You are a good man, Vic," she answered, embracing him. They kissed tenderly and held each other tightly.
Then they broke away, a trifle embarrassed. "Well, if I love the daughter I'd better cut out the hanky-panky with the mother."
"You can love us both, Vic in your own way. But I do think it best that we do not have anything more to do with each other-in this way. You have been very good to me. You have restored to me something I have lost, and I will never forget it."
"And you have restored to me something I was about to lose, and I won't ever forget it either."
Silently, but smiling deeply to themselves out of the secret of love they shared, they returned to the hotel.