Chapter 12
When Mike Barret got the letter, he went into shock. There was no explanation, just a bare message in which Cynthia said she was getting a divorce and for him not to look for her. For the first few minutes, he was too stunned to have any reaction at all. He simply didn't believe it. He put the letter aside and tried not to think about it. He walked down to the PX and ordered a beer and almost punched a guy in the mouth who simply said, "Hello," to him. He left the PX without drinking the beer and went back to his hootch and sat down and read the letter again.
-DEAREST MIKE, I'VE THOUGHT IT ALL OUT. I'M GOING TO GET A DIVORCE. I'M ONLY TAKING MY CLOTHES. EVERYTHING ELSE IS YOURS. GOOD-BYE AND PLEASE DON'T LOOK FOR ME.
LOVE, CYNTHIA
Love? What kind of a letter, he wondered, would she write if she hated? What the hell was going on here? What was she trying to pull?
It took three big MPs the better part of an hour to subdue him once they got a report that there was a maniac tearing his hootch apart. When they found out what his trouble was, they were sympathetic and all charges of assault and battery were dropped. Their report reached Mike's commanding officer together with the letter and a few hours later, Mike was winging his way home on an emergency furlough.
A big city is a bad place to look for someone. They can just vanish among the thousands of people there. Cynthia had left no forwarding address and told the landlord that her husband would settle affairs. She had even paid an extra month's rent. Mike stayed in the apartment, slowly tearing it apart for some clue but found nothing.
He poured over her letters and only found one thing out of the ordinary, when she'd asked about a flyer that was down and missing, a pilot that everybody liked. Why would she ask such a thing? How come she knew of him? Because someone had to tell her. Someone had to know that he'd known Captain William Evers. Hell, every man in his outfit had liked him. Yet it sure wasn't Bill Evers who had passed through. Mike had seen his flaming helicopter plunge and disappear into the endless green jungle. The puzzle wasn't much to go on. Hell, she could have, by accident, meant any number of guys rotating back to the states that knew Evers; maybe even guys that knew him.
The apartment was clean, not a trace or clue to where she had gone. He searched everywhere. In the curt note, Cynthia had said she was getting a divorce. Notice of the divorce would have to appear somewhere and he would have to be served with papers. Unless it was a Mexican divorce !
It was in the border city of Juarez, the city full of red dust, that he found a fat attorney with bad teeth who looked at a picture of Cynthia and, for the price of a few drinks of tequila, admitted that he knew her. "Si, I have seen her, senor."
"Where?"
"Here. She was getting the divorce. A quickie."
"Was she alone?"
"No, senor, she was with another man."
"Who was he?"
"I do not remember, senor. There are so many men and women coming to me with unhappy problems. Who wants to remember all those unhappy faces? Hey, you know something? The heat of the day has given me a terrible thirst."
"This man, did he act as a witness, did he sign anything?"
The fat Mexican lawyer screwed his face up. "Let me see. Si. I think maybe he was a witness."
"I want his name."
The fat lawyer laughed, his belly jerking. "I cannot do that, senor. That is privileged information, a sacred trust between me and my clients."
"Would twenty American dollars make any difference?" Mike asked, holding out a bill.
"He is one Chet Larkin," the lawyer said, making the bill disappear fast. "A bad gringo, senor, bad."
"What makes you say that?"
The Mexican gave an eloquent shrug of the shoulders. "A look, a way of talking, a way of treating the senorita. I've seen many of them."
"One last question. Did they say where they were going to go?"
The Mexican drank his tequila and shrugged again. "I could take you for more money, but I like you, gringo. No, not even a thousand dollars could get me to tell you where they went. It is simple: I do not know."
Mike flew back to San Diego and the apartment with only a little information more than he had before. She had gotten a non-contested divorce in Juarez. Someone who called himself Chet Larkin had signed as her witness.
In the apartment he poured himself a drink of Scotch and sat down to work things out. It wasn't like Cynthia to do things in this way. The whole thing was a puzzle that didn't fit.
The Scotch!
He almost choked on it! Cynthia wasn't a drinker! It wasn't like her to buy a fifth of Scotch and have it around the apartment!
Something was very wrong and it was entirely possible that Cynthia was being forced or talked into doing things against her will. He had to find her, had to at least talk to her before he gave up. He got on the phone and called everyone in an address book he found next to the phone. With the exception of the grocer and drug store, they all turned out to be friends of Cynthia that hadn't seen or heard from her in weeks. Most of them, like herself, were the wives of men overseas, waiting for their loved ones to come home. They could tell him nothing.
He searched the apartment again and then thought of returning to Juarez and really leaning on the fat lawyer. Then he gave it up. The lawyer had been honest with him.
He decided to look up some of his old buddies and have a beer with them and see if they could steer him straight on this fellow named Chet Larkin. He might have been a guy from another outfit.
The next few weeks were spent in the tedious job of tracking down old buddies and others he knew in the service and meeting them for beers and asking them questions.
It was two weeks later when he was near giving up that he ran into a guy who had been in charge of the NCO club in Saigon while Mike was there. Mike had once done a favor for him, cooling a fight, and the guy was eager to return the favor.
"Chet Larkin? Sure I know him. You know him too, the fucking little weasel."
Mike shook his head. "I never knew any Chet Larkin."
"Sure you did, only his name wasn't Chet Larkin then. He was Spec third Willy Catrano. Wily Willy Catrano. You remember him."
Mike did remember him, straightening at the bar with a barely concealed rage. Willy Catrano was a slug, an indecent guy that Mike was foolish enough to let him get girls for him. They were girls of the highest quality. Willy finally got busted by the military police for selling dope-hard stuff-to the troops and there was some talk that he was selling guns and ammunition too, but that couldn't be proved. If it had been established, he would have been tried for treason and probably would never have gotten out. As it was, he was only given a dishonorable discharge.
If Willy was involved with his wife and if Cynthia had allowed herself to become involved with such scum, he would kill the both of them on sight. The question now was, where were they?
Actually, they were not far away. Willy-Chet had no way of knowing that Mike was home on emergency leave and besides, had he known, he probably wouldn't have cared. Willy was now in with the rich set; the fast rich set that had boats in the marina and big Spanish-style houses up in the hills. The bored rich set that wanted things for kicks, things like Cynthia. Willy now had Cynthia drinking all the time and she was almost continually high on grass or hashish. There was no longer any pretense between them and he took her to parties with the idea in mind that she would be the main attraction.
There was the "trip" on the water bed. They had gone to a party where the host and hostess boasted of their new water bed and urged people to try it out. The bedroom was crowded, full of drinking, shouting couples who were busy taking turns on the water bed. Smutty and suggestive comments filled the air as one clothed couple after another wanted to try the exhilarating experience of lying on the water bed.
The party was a wild one and, as usual at these parties, there was much drinking and a lot of promiscuous sex. Most all of it took place in bedrooms until somebody said, "Hey, Chet, how about you and your girl giving us a show on the water bed?"
"Yeah," someone called, "why not?"
"Come on, Chet!"
It was quickly arranged. Most of the people who knew Chet had nothing but contempt for him, but he served a useful purpose in their lives: he supplied them with marijuana and hashish and plenty of girls who were good-looking and willing to do most anything. And the star of his collection, the girl he saved for the very best parties, was Cynthia.
It was quickly arranged. Chet never did anything for free. Anything unless it led to a later payment. Since being discharged dishonorably from the service, he had done very well, clearing as much as two thousand dollars a month with his illicit activities. Now it was arranged. Cynthia was to put a little show on for the crowd, a little thing on the water bed and Chet was being paid handsomely in return.
The host was a man renowned for his sadistic sense of humor and so he insisted that his black butler, Bernard, be involved with Cynthia. "It is my house," he said, "My bed, my servant, and besides, I'm paying. Wait until you see the size of Bernard's cock."
First, Willy-Chet felt he had to get Cynthia in the proper mood. He took her to a little room and lit a hashish cigarette for her. "Here," he said, "have a couple hits of this and we'll go out and have some fun with the peasants."
"Richest-looking peasants I've ever seen," Cynthia said, taking the cigarette and dragging deep on it. The change that had come over her in the last few weeks was remarkable. She looked harder, dressed flashier and more daring, showing more cleavage and leg than ever before. It was sex with her almost every night now, and she found that she was no longer satisfied with one or two men no matter how good they were. The number had now grown to three or four and even a woman or two had been thrown in. Cynthia didn't care. All she looked for now was new and better kicks.
Chet-Willy's hold over her was practically complete. She agreed totally with his analysis of her: a nympho who could never get enough. She even knew a lot about him that she had never guessed before: like his real name and what he really did for a living. She called him "Chet" because that's how he preferred to be known.
This party was to be the last of any action for the two of them in the San Diego area. Chet had grown restless lately and wanted to move on, change the scenery, start up a new action in a new area. He was thinking of Las Vegas. Over a bottle of Scotch, he'd say, "You dress right, do what I say, act the way I tell you and we'll make it big in Las Vegas. Believe me, Vegas is the hustler's town. There are more hustlers per square foot on Vegas than anywhere else on earth. With your build and face, we'll make it big. Vegas is where the big orgies go on."
He would talk to Cynthia for hours, describing the kind of set up they should look for and telling her he had enough money to bankroll them for a couple of months. "Besides," he would say, restless, agitated, nervous, "I just feel like we should get out of town, like we should move on. I just got a funny, bad feeling," he would say, pacing the floor.
So this was to be the last little fling in San
Diego. Chet was getting paid five hundred dollars to provide all the grass and hashish and girls needed for a fine big party. And the host was an odd type who threw this kind of party partially for business and mainly for his own twisted sense of pleasure. He loved seeing people acting in an abandoned way, forgetting their personalities for a while and letting themselves go, behaving as they really were, while he sat back, observant and amused.
Indeed, the girl Chet had brought along this time was smashing-looking, having the breathtaking quality of a Hollywood starlet with a sense of unbridled sensuousness about her. After an initial doubt, he was more than satisfied that Chet had filled the bill again. Now he was off with his girl and he must stage the whole thing. He signaled Bernard, his black valet and butler, who turned the lights down on a rheostat. An excited murmur ran through the room and everyone began gathering around the as yet unoccupied water bed. Bernard flicked another switch and a dull spot came on overhead, lighting the confines of the water bed in a soft spotlight through which drifted a haze of hashish smoke.
The room was hot and the talk was low and excited. The odor of the sickly sweet smell of hashish was heavy in the room and the guests sat around the room with glazed eyes and an expectant air. They sipped on their drinks and were ready for anything. Most of them were veterans at the party. A few were new, like the last fellow to slip in the door right before the lights went low. His name was Mike Barret.