Chapter 7
Katrina saw Clint sitting on the terrace, buried in his own thoughts, and was careful not to let him see her as she sneaked back into the hotel. After a day of walking and thinking, she had made a decision. And now, settling back in the quiet of her hotel room, she reviewed that decision.
Basically, she had no way out. She could not call the hotel's bluff, because there were certain people, who, if they ever saw some of those revolting pictures Boulo had someone make at that so-called "ceremony," could ruin her forever in the States. One made enemies in Hollywood, no matter what one did, and Katrina had made her share. So even if she could count on her close friends not to react to them, she knew there were people who would love to get their hands on them. The amazing thing was that Boulo had their addresses, how, Katrina had no idea.
And, of course, the five thousand dollars they were blackmailing her for was of no real consequence. She could have that in the morning mail, if she wanted it, no problem. That was one thing she had gotten out of her disaster of a marriage some security against the next few years of probable independence and changes of plans.
When you came right down to it, Katrina had decided, she was simply not going to let these mafia-types extort the money from her. She had made a mistake, let her guard down for once, and they had gotten her, but good. She had sunk so low, she figured, there was nowhere to go but up. So why not stay down in the mire a little longer, long enough to worm her way into the operation that produced these little schemes and get her hands on the negatives of those pictures. Fight fire with fire, she thought, and filth with filth. She had done it before. She could do it again. All it took was a strong stomach. And anyone who could look at even pictures of what she had done that night with those "dancers" and not gag outright, had a strong stomach, she figured. That's what it took to survive a fierce body blow. She would see now if they could take the same thing in reverse. But it would take some fast work. Time was not on her side. Clint would probably not be staying much longer, and when he left, she damn sure wanted to be going with him, in clear conscience and with a renewed sense of the trust they had been building.
Clint skipped dinner at the hotel that night. His vacation was over, he had decided, until he got some word from Katrina. The bug of curiosity had bitten him, and suddenly he wanted to know what San Dozes was really like, and how it fitted into the world at large.
He started where a reporter often starts in the cheaper taverns along that part of the waterfront where the beaches stopped and the loading piers started. It took him three and a half hours and any number of abominable drinks, but he found what he was looking for: someone he knew told the truth when he talked.
It didn't matter really what he talked about, as long as he could establish one contact with a reliable human being, but Clint's luck in this respect was running right, and he got more in Cheyenne than he had bargained on finding.
Cheyenne ran a seafood snack-shop for a largely native trade. But at the half-closed-in end of his shack, he had an old bamboo bar with three heavily padded stools. He had bought the whole thing at an auction held by a bankrupt movie lot back in the thirties. Clint smiled at the humor of it. A Caribbean islander working for fifteen years as an Indian heavy in silent pictures and the early talkies; pulling up stakes during the depression and buying an executive-type bar to bring back home with him and build a business around.
As ludicrous as the "bar" was, though, Cheyenne mixed good drinks California style, and talked straight talk. One of the things Clint was looking for was a telephone, for instance. And talking with Cheyenne convinced him that his hunch had been right that there was something peculiar in the fact that the only telephones on the island were in the hotel.
"Sure, you know, that's part of the set-up," Cheyenne assured him. "They got the whole island sewn up, and all the others too. When you got something sewn up, you don't go putting telephones all over the place. They got the phones, and they got people listening. Listen, I can't phone and find out how my MGM stock is doing that they don't know I'm calling. What you want a telephone for, anyway? The tourists here they're supposed to leave their worries behind when they come here."
"Save it," Clint smiled, appreciating Cheyenne's sarcasm. "I want to get word to a friend in the States to send me some stuff. A camera, a recorder there's something about this whole set-up that strikes me as being slightly odd, you know? I'd like to do a little documentary work."
"Say, that's not polite, on these islands," Cheyenne replied. "But if you want, I can take a message for you to be telegraphed. I have a friend who goes over to the Hilton on the other island every night takes the laundry. You give me the message. He can send for your things. He can bring them over. They'll never know."
"Who's the 'they'? " Clint asked, breaking his promise to himself not to ask Cheyenne outright.
"Ha! Hey, you really are a tourist, right? Do me a favor," he said, leaning on the bar and rolling a cigarette, "don't ask me who 'they' are. I tell you that they own the islands. I'll go farther and tell you that a crummy little sand-palace like this makes a good return on their investment just like it had gambling, you know, casinos the whole bit."
"That's what I was thinking," Clint mused. Then he dropped his defenses and told Cheyenne what he had seen and heard while eavesdropping outside Boulo's window that afternoon. "What do you make of that?" he asked the noble savage. "Something to do with each guest being assigned to a hotel staff member and a schedule of some sort. I can't figure it. They sure as hell weren't discussing who needed salt-free diets."
"That's the truth," said Cheyenne, scraping the label off a bottle of cheap gin and pasting an import brand name on.
"Look," he continued, "I like you, Westwood. It's been a long time since an intelligent American came to my bar and talked to me. But you're not a government man. I know that. So what does that make you? What do you want?"
"I don't know," Clint replied. "I'm a free-lance muckraker with a psychopath of a sister. It's her vacation. I've also got a broken heart at the moment. Big deal. It just suddenly hits me that this place can't make the money it takes to justify monopoly control off the kind of tourists I see here. So if there are no casinos and no whorehouses, where's the gimmick?"
"Now you're thinking," said Cheyenne. "I'll tell you something. That sister of yours. I know all about her. The guy who suckered her into that shack is a ass I threw out of here years ago. There's no one on this street down here who hasn't had a go at your sister in the last three days. I'm glad you know she's got a problem. If I were you, I'd give her a free rein again. The kind of thing she goes in for, she'll lead you sooner or later to the gimmick. You they won't fool with, when it comes to gimmicks. Whatever you are back in the States, 'they' know all about it. Believe me. You want to find out what's really going on here. Follow your sister. I'll see you later. The hootch is on the house."
"Thanks," Clint replied, scribbling on a piece of paper. "Here's the telegram. See you."
It was late when he got back to the hotel, but he found out from the desk clerk that Shirley hadn't been around all evening. Nor was she up in her room. His conversation with Cheyenne really hadn't given him much to go on, he thought, providing there was anywhere to go. But he'd lost a day's work, if Shirley didn't show, he thought, when he thought of Cheyenne's advice.
He kept thinking all night, in his sleep, with the result that he overslept and nearly missed Shirley the next morning. He woke just as her door slammed shut and heard her sandals go scuffling down the hall. Bounding out of bed, he slipped on a pair of slacks and a sport shirt and whipped out of his room. By running down the main stairs, he reached the lobby just as she came out of the elevator. Hanging back so she wouldn't see him, Clint watched her cross the lobby and head for the hotel office. There was only one person she'd be going to see, he thought.
He shot through the dining room and slipped through the kitchen, making the mistake of forgetting that the staff were still busily at work. He got some odd looks as he threaded his way through the hot pantry and escaped to the courtyard. But no one checked him or followed him. Making sure he hadn't been spotted, Clint did exactly what Shirley had done the day before grabbed an empty garbage can and lugged it around the corner of the building with him.
Arriving at Boulo's window, he positioned the can and clambered up on it. Not daring to peek into the office, he listened with all the concentration of a leatherneck on a sniper patrol and was rewarded by snatches of conversation between that fat bastard of a manager and his sister.
" ... so glad we're all so compatible," he heard Shirley say. "Now where is it that tonight you want me..."
Some words Clint couldn't discern, then Boulo's voice: "Just show the driver that address any taxi'll know. We'll be looking forward to seeing you."
"Oh, I'm the one who'll be looking forward to it," he heard Shirley say, and that apparently was the end of it.
Clint cleared out of the hiding-place and retraced his steps back to the lobby. But Shirley was nowhere to be found. Not on the terrace; no one had seen her head for the beach or upstairs. Damn! he thought; he had to know where she was going tonight. And the only way to find out was to find her, sometime in the course of the day.
Katrina had gotten a much earlier start on the day. She had planned the first stage of her attack and had spent the morning looking for the young woman who had betrayed her and gotten her into this fix. It was about mid-day that she came across Alya by the hotel's overheated outdoor pool where only the laziest and most modest of the hotel's introverted guests spent their time.
Alya was sunning herself, wearing a bikini which, Katrina figured, made her own look Victorian. The top half resembled a bandana that had been folded to make a blindfold, and just barely, it seemed, concealed the crucial extremities of the girl's pointed breasts. The bottom half made no attempt to do anything other than prevent sunburn to the most delicate part of the female body. Pretty odd, thought Katrina, considering the other's naturally dark complexion. She drew up a chair quietly next to where Alya was lying.
"Why, Miss Nadie," exclaimed Alya, raising her head at the sound of the chair scraping on the concrete. "What a pleasure to see you. I hope you enjoyed our little foray the other night. Where there are regrets, there's no fun, you know." She lay back and closed her eyes.
Bitch! Katrina thought. She felt like putting her cigarette out on the tender area between the girl's nearly naked breasts. But she had planned things too deliberately to let herself be annoyed by the other's gratuitous taunts.
"As a matter-of-fact," she replied evenly, "that's just what I'd like to talk to you about."
"Oh, you know, I'm sorry," replied the girl without moving or opening her eyes. "But any conversation on that subject should be taken up with the manager. He'll be happy to discuss it."
Katrina felt her hatred building for this smug creature, but swallowed it and went on.
"I don't think you understand," she said. "I was amazed at the whole thing, but I don't want to rehash any of that particular evening. The truth of it is, that after thinking about it, I find I've never enjoyed myself so much, if you know what I mean," she paused.
Alya opened one eye half-way at this last comment and its deliberate ambiguity. Katrina went on as if she hadn't noticed.
"I didn't want to admit it at first, but it's precisely the sort of thing I guess I secretly wanted to discover when I decided to come to the Caribbean. The why's and wherefores aren't important. Neither is the fact that, while I was learning all sorts of things about myself the other night, I wouldn't particularly care to repeat that sort of experience again in that context, I mean.
"What I'm really getting at is that you're obviously a person who knows where the action is on the island. And I'm finding that I really want to be part of the action. Not quite that sort, but on a level, say, that's more consistent with the atmosphere and types of people I'm used to. Do you follow me?" she asked Alya.
"Continue," said the other, making no move to appear interested or otherwise in Katrina's comments.
"Well, to put it as bluntly as I can as one woman to another interested in much the same sort of, ah, liberties I've often found it difficult to reconcile what I look for in sex with what's offered me. Now the other night appealed to me because I enjoyed it so much. But what I'm wondering is if there wasn't some other environment some other social setting, in which the same sort of thing goes on, in which I might feel a bit more at home than I did with those dancers."
"But you say you enjoyed them and their ideas of recreation," ventured the sunbathing girl.
"Indeed I did," replied Katrina. "But look, I feel I can pick my friends, so to speak. Money and time are of no concern to me, as you probably know..." That registered, thought Katrina, noticing the inadvertent motion of the eyebrow in the other and hoping that the comment had produced the desired effect. " ... I've got plenty of both. In essence, I'm looking for a more stimulating crowd than your dancer-friends. And I thought you might be just the person who'd know if there were people around who'd be interested in me."
"You sound as if you're putting yourself on the market," observed the other with a wry smile.
"Well, after all," observed Katrina as nonchalantly as she could, rising from her chair, "it is an unusual market we're talking about. And the buyers in such a market would probably be people I'd be willing to sell to without haggling over prices. I wish you'd give it some thought and let me know. Good morning."
Katrina strolled away, only slightly nervous about how her pitch had gone over. When it came down to it, she thought, it was tougher to sell yourself as a whore than as anything else. But she had the feeling that she'd put her notice of sale in the right hands. Now to try and find the patience to wait for a bid!
Clint was beginning to feel like a boy scout, after tracking his sister around for half the afternoon. He had finally come across Shirley but had no opportunity to find out where she was headed that night. Now he had followed her up to her room. And the minute she had gone into the head, he had slipped in and grabbed her purse. Without hesitation, his hand shot to the bottom of the handbag, to the hinged flap he knew lay at the bottom of the lipsticks and assorted junk where Shirley usually hid her dope. He found it and "felt around until his fingers discovered a slip of paper. Quickly he dug it out and read the initials scrawled in pencil: VH. He replaced it and ducked out of the room just as the toilet began flushing and Shirley emerged.
"Come in," she called, hearing a knock on the door. "Why, brother baby, how nice to see you. Where have you been all this time holding off all comers at a ping-pong tournament?"
"Very funny," Clint replied. "Since we seem to have been avoiding each other for so long, why don't we dine together at a late hour?"
"Oh, brother baby, I'd love to," cooed Shirley, "but I've got a date at eight-thirty. Some other night."
"Suits me," Clint shrugged, walking back out of the room into his own. Eight-thirty, he thought. Well, that gave him a little time to poke around for Katrina.
But Katrina wasn't to be found for the poking. The message she had given to Alya that morning had been borne by the girl to interested parties, and Alya had been instructed to find out just how serious Katrina Nadie was whether she was trying to make trouble regarding the blackmail racket or was "sincerely" interested in more of the behavior she'd been introduced to. It was Alya's not unpleasant task to perform the trial experiment on this American woman who intimated that money and time were merely obstacles to her pursuit of pleasure.
She had found Katrina resting up in her room. Alya's plan was simple and would not only tell her how serious the American beauty was about her confession of readiness, but would also contribute to Alya's new found diversion. When Katrina called, "Come in," Alya strode right into the room.
"I think I've found the people you're looking for," she announced, "but they wanted me to test your willingness under completely voluntary circumstances."
"Fine," said Katrina, preparing herself for whatever was to come. As it happened, her preparations were very nearly not enough. For Alya, wearing a lascivious, mocking grin, had kicked off her sandals, pulled off her sheath, and flopped onto Katrina's bed.
"Okay, gringo," she purred, "come, make love to me."
Katrina started. Just like that, she thought, but kept the words from passing her lips. Well, there was no point in wasting any time. She edged over to the bed, saying a silent prayer, hoping that what she was about to do and whatever followed would redeem her in Clint's eyes.
As her eyes traveled the length of Alya's waiting, outstretched figure, Katrina's memory was jogged to a day in Hollywood when at a large party she had walked into a bedroom and accidentally interrupted a little passion play between two sideline starlets. She remembered how the instinctive revulsion she had felt at the sight of two female bodies clutching one another had been allayed by a queer jolt of interest before she stumbled back out the door.
And now, looking at Alya, Katrina's mind flipped through both these reactions again: the alienated reaction of disgust at the prospect of making love to a woman upon a cold-blooded command and the involuntary feeling of temptation she derived from the spectacle of Alya's charms brazenly displayed on her bed.
The acid test, she thought. For a second she felt uneasy when she considered that she was a mere virgin when it came to lesbian love, but she quickly reminded herself that the performance was obviously going to be judged on intention, and not style.
Katrina stepped out of her own clothes, turning to one side with a twinge of modesty as Alya rolled on her side and greedily stared at her. "Oh, I like you," breathed the girl on the bed. "This will be so nice, yes?"
"Yes," Katrina forced herself to say, coming toward the other in her underclothes.
"Off, take everything off!" Alya commanded, waving her hand in a silly, schoolgirl gesture. Katrina bit her lip and removed her bra and panties. It was so degrading, she tried to remind herself. But at the same time, she felt a perverse pride at the way the other's eyes widened when she uncovered her magnificent breasts. They stood forward on her chest like great dirigibles tethered in a strong headwind, thrusting out their ruby tips with indescribable impertinence.
Now it was Alya's turn to blow her cool. She had planned to have the American girl make love to her, debasing her completely. But she found herself gripped by a compulsion to caress this sumptuous tan body that hovered near her, standing in two-toned naked glory.
"Come," Alya said hoarsely, unable to take her eyes off the other. Katrina moved awkwardly to the bed, raising one knee and half-kneeling next to the darker girl. She herself was sliding into a new mood, inspired by the closeness of their two beautiful bodies. She glanced across the room and caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror caught sight of her high, thrusting breasts and curving figure poised near the reclining form of the islander.
Then Katrina gasped and looked back, half in alarm, as Alya's fingers lighted on her leg. She looked down and saw the brown hand glide up her thigh, and her body jerked as the caress triggered certain sensitive nerves. She hovered there as Alya continued to stroke her, setting her thighs to a prickling uneasiness. Her buttocks tightened and she felt a cramp in her back as the caresses went on. But she couldn't move. Instead she was paralyzed by the touch of this woman upon her body, this touch which quickly moved from a playful level to a deadly intimate one.
"Unnhh," Katrina heard herself gasp when Alya's fingers probed her secret place with merciless accuracy. Unable to move, Katrina turned the top half of her body first one way, then the other, writhing above the goading fingers.
"Ohhh, oh no!" she ejaculated, as Alya's fingers sought her more deeply, triggering off the most unbearable of fleshly contacts. Katrina shut her eyes and moaned in her throat. Her weight leaned against the bed and she was forced to swing her other knee onto it. Then she knelt erect, feebly trying to move herself away from the eager fondling of the other.
In desperation, unable to bring herself to make contact with her torturer, yet unable to withstand the stimulation that was setting her entire body on fire, Katrina moaned again. Her hands jerked uncertainly and then went to her own breasts, squashing them against her in an attempt to still the fires that had started there.
Alya's eyes were shining now, and her lips were gleaming in a wet, Machiavellian smile. What she'd done yesterday with the other American in Boulo's office had been fun. But this was much better, seducing another woman from scratch, turning her from a dignified, mature human being into a moaning, wracked captive of lust.
Alya pushed Katrina so that she fell back onto the bed. She hunched herself like a tigress ready for the kill, devouring the sight of the golden body that pressed its thighs together on her arm and covered its breasts with its own hands.
Lunging. forward, Alya pried Katrina's buttery thighs apart and squirmed in between them. Katrina went into a convulsion as Alya's body made contact with the insides of her legs and her stomach. But Alya pressed on, sliding her own bronze skin over the other's tawny form. She took Katrina's hands away, holding her by the wrists. And with a leer that encompassed her entire face, lowered herself with her own compact, sharply-profiled breasts to the other's lush, swelling body.
"Oh, I can't stand it," Katrina groaned, gurgling with what almost seemed to be hysteria as she felt the darker girl's body press and churn against her own felt the small, hard nipples stub themselves against her own rapidly swelling buds, and felt the ineffable ecstasy of another woman's hidden fire joined to her own.
With a sudden display of abandon, she threw her arms around her new lover, crushing her to her burning body. Her strong legs arched up and locked the slender hips to her own. Her spine curved and her sides rippled as she roiled her charms against the other's. With a new spirit of unleashed rapacity, all images of right fading into darkness, she blindly sought the other's mouth with her own.
Then they were completely together, surging and gyrating as one, their sweating forms mashing each other. Each was straining under the burden of mutual frustrations which each had formerly known how to appease only in coupling with a male body. Spurred on by their heightened need, each broke her hold on the other.
On a mutual cue, they scrambled about the bed, coming together again in the only position that could afford equal relief to both. Katrina her brain benumbed by the catalytic impact of the experience she was just entering into sought Alya's body with the sure instinct Alya herself had displayed with Shirley on Boulo's office floor.
Then a bolt of lightning jagged through her body as Alya's mouth found her. And even as she felt herself reacting, she knew she had unleashed the same response in the other when Alya turned with a throaty scream and rolled them both over in a spasmodic reflex to Katrina's love-making.
The last thing Katrina knew was that she had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror her shining skin almost indistinguishable from Alya's; her hair tumbling over the other's thighs, her own face a contorted mask of lust. Then she was melting to Alya, welding herself to the other's body with passion, and Alya to her, convulsed with a fiery sense of satisfaction from the pleasure she was receiving and giving, finally dissolving under the intensity of their perverse rite, until she fainted away with sated mind and saturated body.
Clint sat at Cheyenne's bar, listening to the islander's explanation of the initials he had seen on the piece of paper in Shirley's purse.
"VH; look, there is a system here on San Dozes, for the other half of the island. The half we're on you have a hotel, the native town, and like that. So, over on the other half, you got all private land. Big villas. See, that's what the V stands for. All of them got different names. The H means Hibiscus. Villa de las Hibiscas, no? It is all very Yankee.
"The biggest villa is known in the system as VO Villa de los Orquideas but you will never get in there."
"No?" Clint queried him.
"No well maybe in, but not out alive; that is where the syndicate is for half the Caribbean headquarters. That is why San Dozes is such a modest operation, on the surface. However, you pay a taxi well and he will take you to this villa your sister is at. But if you want to wait a couple of hours, there is a package coming for you from the next island."
"A package. Not the stuff I cabled for?" Clint asked, surprised.
"Si," answered Cheyenne. "You must have good friends. They send you your things by air express, all in 24 hours. My man is bringing it over."
Clint decided to wait for the package, although it didn't come for an hour and a half longer than Cheyenne expected. It was nearly midnight when a boat tied up to the other side of the waterfront bar. But it took only minutes for Clint to check and load his several cameras. He took the miniature and his pocket recorder, leaving the rest with Cheyenne, and hailed a cab.
The wait was a mistake in a way. Not only had the ride cost Clint an exorbitant amount, but it appeared from the looks of things that he had missed the party. Clint wasted no time after finding the door to the courtyard locked. He went over the wall and crept along the tiled court until he came to the main building. There were lights on, but he heard no sounds. He checked the camera, holding it up under his cuff, and proceeded from archway to archway, looking cautiously into the elegantly furnished rooms of the villa.
Then he came to an open door and slipped inside. Shirley was probably long gone, he thought, sorry that he had waited for his gear. He looked cautiously around the large room he was in. Incredible, he thought, noting the array of spotlights and semi-professional stage equipment that hung from the ceiling and balconied walls. But what was more incredible was the sight at the far end of the room, where the floor was raised to a higher level. Judging from the columns and other props that were displayed on the dais, Clint could only surmise that some private theatre group had been staging their own version of the Fall of Rome.
Clint walked up the room, marveling at the plaster and gilt reconstructions of mythological symbols that stood about. At the very rear of the dais there was a handsomely ornamented curtain covering some sort of portal. That would be the focus of attention of this wacky set, he thought, and pulled the curtain aside. He had not been wrong in his guess.
His hand went to his stomach as he felt a wave of sickness wash over him. With horror and nausea, he staggered back from the portal that so much resembled a reconstructed example of a pagan example. Clint had covered a lot of grisly things as a journalist, but this was one time that he stood paralyzed before he could bring himself to take pictures.
Pictures of his own sister, Shirley, as she hung by her hands, twirling gently from a rope. Hung in bloody gore and ornamentation. The top half of her was still intact painted with bright colors, her breasts encircled by Cleopatralike metal spirals of faked gold. But the bottom half of her Clint felt the nausea shoot through him again as he focused on the sight through the miniature camera's precise lens.
The bottom half of her virtually no longer existed. Nothing but torn and bloody flesh that still oozed gore onto the one thing Clint knew wasn't made of papier-mƒch‚ the great, cruel phallic symbol she had been impaled on, and died on. Clint stood, snapping pictures of his sister's grisly, butchered remains until he could no longer stand it, and fled into the night, away from the Villa of Hibiscuses.