Chapter 9

Clint and Cheyenne sat out in the back of the small seafood bar, on a little projection of the pier that looked out over the islanders' boats as they bobbed in the sea. They had been discussing Clint's foray of last night and what it had produced. Cheyenne had been skeptical at first, but he was a believer after Clint laid his cards on the table and told the ex-film veteran about the state he had found his murdered sister in.

"Well, it was good you got the pictures," Cheyenne was saying, taking a sip from a tall glass of cold island punch. "Not that you can do anything with them, like I told you before. The police will not do anything, and the consulates cannot. If you were not what you are, the only thing you could do would be to peddle your pictures to some tabloid.

"But you are a newspaperman. If you do things right and learn the right things, you can be a great force for good down here."

"Never mind that. I just want to get the bastards who did that to Shirley!" Clint muttered.

"Ah, you must be bigger than that. For if you are not, those who are bigger than you will crush you like a worm." Cheyenne made a rubbing motion between his thumb and forefinger. "Before, you know, when you were speaking of theories, I was not so interested. Now that your sister is dead, I am sorry for you, but that still doesn't interest me so much. I have heard of others dying in much the same manner.

"What does interest me is that you might be the man who could do what all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot do."

Clint looked at him narrowly, not appreciating the man's flippant tone.

"I am not joking," Cheyenne went on. "The revenue people cannot do it; the other authorities cannot do it; the government cannot do it because it is afraid. Afraid of the power of the few men who control this part of the world.

"It is real power, Westwood, like nowhere else except maybe in South America or Sicily, from what I hear. The only thing that can touch that kind of corrupt power is publicity. That is why I say I'm interested. Before, when I was talking to you, you were just a reporter with some hunches. Now you have a stake in your story. And I am going to lead you directly to the story. Because now I know you will follow it through. Now I trust you, and now I will help you."

"You'd help me if you explained what the devil you were ranting about," said Clint sourly. He had not fully recovered from the shock of what he had seen last night.

"Explanations! Yankees always want explanations," Cheyenne said, gesturing with his hands. "I am giving you information. Look," he said, drawing on the small table between them with a used match. "This is where we are the half of San Dozes the world sees. This is where they are the half that lets the world see what they should decide it should see. You remember I explained to you about the Villa de los Orquideas. This is it, at the other end of the island. Inside is the empire the men; the system; the power that gives me my liquor import license; the power that sells you your ticket in New York; the power that leads your sister to kill herself."

"Swell," said Clint, "so?"

"So," continued Cheyenne. "During the weekend, the men with the power go their separate ways, controlling the Caribbean. But on the weekend, every weekend, they gather here. What they do makes the Hollywood I knew in the twenties look like Freedom-land today. But that doesn't concern you. You will go there during the week. I will show you how to get in. You play a few days of what do they call it? Ah! 'I Spy,' no? You do this. Then you go back to the States and start writing your stories. It is simple. It will only take courage. I will go with you. Is it a deal?"

"It's a deal!" nodded Clint, raising his glass as Cheyenne toasted him. "But," he added, "if that villa's anything like I think it is, I don't see how two men are going to get their hands on what I need."

"No worry," Cheyenne assured him. "I told you, it only takes courage. The tax people, the FBI, Interpol these people do not deal in courage any longer. It is always letters and bugs and red-tape. So they do not get inside. One needs to be inside. With one who knows the villa inside and out. And I am that one!"

"Cheyenne, old buddy," Clint said, catching on. "The people on the Pulitzer committee are going to love you!"

"Nah," said the islander. "I can remember back when the Oscar people wouldn't even look at my nomination because I wasn't Anglo-Saxon and a Princeton graduate. The States do not change so fast."

"You'd be surprised," said Clint. "Let's fill that jug back up and discuss it."

"That'll be a big jug, then, Yankee," laughed Cheyenne. "We got a whole weekend to do our discussing."

Katrina was lying on her back, with the dog sleeping restlessly by her side. She was praying something she hadn't done in years. But after she had recovered from her horror at her own depravity a few meals ago, she had remembered Alya's parting words. It didn't matter that she had just heard them then. They had become appropriate practically immediately. For where did reality become non-existent if not in this museum-like compartment where Katrina had betrayed herself as never before? So she had turned to prayer a very direct sort of prayer, in which she attempted to find what was left of the person she knew to be herself, the person she had abandoned so long ago. Maybe, she thought intending no humor that was why the dog was stirring so uneasily, because she was praying. Served the brute right.

At that instant, something extraordinary happened. The door to her room opened. Katrina sat bolt upright at the noise. She had become so used to her confinement that she felt not the slightest bit of embarrassment when the little man she knew from days or was it weeks ago walked in. "Your master will see you now," he announced quite simply.

Katrina merely stared at him, wanting to ask him a million questions, from where in hell was her luggage to who in hell called himself her "master." But the confinement had done its job well. She didn't ask him anything.

Nor did she make any move when the man came forward with what looked like a dog-chain. But Katrina knew instinctively whom the chain was for, because the Doberman had no collar. The small man leaned forward and clipped one end of the chain to the ring attached to the steel circlet around her neck.

He did not have to lead her with it. Katrina got up off the bed and followed him out of the room, her eyes fixed on the silvery swinging chain that led from her neck to his small hairy hand. He led her back down the staircase they had ascended the night she came and into the central hall. Here he motioned her over to a writing stand on which lay a piece of parchment. Katrina read it soberly:

"I, Katrina Nadie, being of sound mind and body, did willingly undertake to come to the Villa de los Orquideas. I understand that I have ceased to exist to the outside world for a period of..." Katrina saw the phrase "two months" written in the blank..."dating from this day. During this time I will happily undertake whatever duties my hosts require of me, no matter how they affect me now or afterward. I understand that I shall be returned to the place from whence I came, in perfect health, and that I will erase all memory of my stay here, under pain of death."

Katrina's tormented mind managed to summon up one word as she read the document over once more: "fantastic." Another touch of the medieval circus, she thought, although if this nonsense was supposed to be binding, she was glad to see the stipulation about health and the duration of her stay. All the same, this wasn't turning out to be quite what she expected. But she signed the document.

She was then led through one room after another, the Doberman padding silently along beside her. Katrina suddenly realized why she felt so funny it was the light, sunlight, and the impact of new surroundings that were disorienting her. She paused to get a better look at her surroundings. Instantly, there was a sharp pain at her neck as the little man jerked on the leash, making the steel collar bite into her skin. And Katrina realized that whatever was going on here wasn't considered a game by some people.

They turned off the long, vaulted hall with its paneling and paintings, and Katrina found herself standing in a small, stark room. The little man dropped the chain and left the room. Katrina and the dog were left facing a pock-marked man in a sweatshirt, who regarded her naked form with a cynical eye.

"You are to be a bitch this weekend," he said slowly, measuring out his thickly pronounced words in order to let them sink in on Katrina's bemused brain. So, she thought, it was the weekend. She had been cooped up for nearly a week. The voice broke back in on her thoughts.

"I have orders to train you in obedience trials so that you will be fit to serve your master." Katrina was about to smile, but she halted when the man dug into a trunk next to him and pulled out what looked like a fur costume.

"Put it on," he commanded. Katrina took the thing from him and regarded it suspiciously. It was some kind of hairy coverall outfit. She climbed into the pants part and let the man help her into the rest. When he had zipped it up the back, Katrina inspected her new appearance. The dark-colored fur suit covered her whole body from her neck to her toes, encasing her feet and hands. But there were two exceptions to its coverage. One consisted of two holes through which her breasts bulged in separate naked splendor. The other was that the garment was cut away from her navel to the small of her back, allowing access to her from in front or behind. In spite of the apertures, Katrina was immediately becoming warm. The costume was tight all over her body and seemed to be lined with the kind of rubber used in skindiving suits. She realized that instead of hands and feet now, she had rubber padded paws at the end of each limb. Still, she thought, it didn't make her seem terribly dog-like, if that's what they were after.

But then the man produced a narrow cord which splayed in two at one end. He pushed her head down until she bent over. Then he quickly snapped one end of the cord to the ring in her steel collar and, running the other two ends of the Y through two small holes in the ankles of the costume, clipped them to the steel bands above her feet. Then he stepped back.

Katrina's immediate move was to stand erect again. But all she got was a sharp pain in her back for her trouble. For the cord had been attached precisely to prevent her from straightening up. She was bent over by it, and could not straighten her body. Automatically, as she felt herself growing a bit dizzy from the position, she reached down to the floor with her furry arms.

"Better," said the man, quietiy. "Much better."

Katrina suddenly apprehended the fact that the rig was designed to keep her on all fours. The man re-attached the silver chain to her and motioned her to walk in a circle around him on her hands and feet. Feeling like an ass, Katrina stumbled around, nearly tripping over herself. They didn't pull any punches when it came to real humiliation, she thought, as she shuffled along, her breasts jogging and swaying where they hung out of her furry covering.

After a minute of these exertions, she felt her body covered with sweat inside the stuffy suit. Deciding that this had gone far enough, she paused to catch her breath. No sooner had she done so than she felt the sting of a sharp blow on her rear and, shaking her hair aside, saw that she had just been hit by a short lash that her trainer held in his hand.

Again he motioned her around, and, gasping for breath, the sweat running down her stomach and down her arms and legs to the paws of the suit, she struggled to comply. She felt a sharp jerk on the collar and stopped, swaying as her muscles cried out against the treatment they were receiving.

Then he put her through a whole list of commands, and, for the first time, as she sat and rolled over and heeled and gave the man her paw, she realized that a dog's life was not everything it seemed.

When he seemed satisfied that she would do, he took in the chain until she had to crouch only inches from his leg. Then he walked briskly out of the room, forcing her to shamble after him, trying not to choke herself on the cord that led from her neck to her ankles, or get her knuckles stepped on by his heavily shod feet.

With her hair tumbling around her face, she couldn't see where they were heading, so intently did she have to concentrate on the floor beneath and ahead of her. After a long walk over carpets and tiled floors, they went up a flight of steps and were out in the fresh air. What a relief to be outside again, Katrina felt, as she was pulled along. For an instant, with the blood rushing to her brain and her heart pounding, she recalled where she'd been a few days ago, and considered the outrage of where she was now. Orgies, yes, if they could have brought her back the pictures. But this? It was incredible...

But now her trainer was running along a path and Katrina was working feverishly to catch up with him. Several times she tripped on her hands and fell but each time was pulled forcibly along until she could regain the excruciating posture necessary for motion. She thought she would drown in her own sweat, the way it was sloshing about under the furry exterior of her costume. Either that or die of heat prostration. She realized with a shock that her mouth was wide open, and that in gasping for breath, she was pantomiming a dog's panting.

At that point, the path under her feet turned to flagstone. She saw the ridge of a swimming pool from between the strands of her hair. And then they had stopped. She craned her neck and looked up, as a chorus of laughter and loud "bravos" reached her ears. She was facing a small group of men, seated around the side of the pool in their bathing trunks and sport-shirts. This must be the group she was after, Katrina thought, raising one paw to wipe the sweat and hair out of her eyes. At least it better be.

Then one of the men, a short balding one with a protruding belly, got up from the group and came over to where she was crouching. He took the chain from her trainer and thanked him. And Katrina found herself stumbling along after him over to the circle of men, who could scarcely control their laughter.

"She's beautiful, Bertie, but where're her papers?" one of them cried.

"Hey, pooch, nice doggie," said another, reaching over and scratching Katrina on the back.

"Make her play dead, Bertie; give us a look at those boobs," shouted a third.

Her "master" laughed in agreement and gave a savage jerk on the chain. "Play dead, bitch!" he commanded. Katrina lay on her side, feeling the sweat ooze between her flesh and the hot suit where it touched the even hotter flagstones. "C'mon, play dead," the man called Bertie snarled, giving Katrina a vicious kick in the side with his slippered foot.

Katrina gave a little yelp of pain and turned on her back, her hair falling back into a puddle of the pool water. She crooked her arms and legs in what she thought would be a convincing portrait of a dead dog.

"Beautiful, hey fantastic! Is she housebroken yet?" The men roared with laughter.

"Get a look at those," said Bertie proudly, kicking Katrina's arms aside and exposing her breasts, which glistened with sweat in the sun. "Not every bitch that comes along is hung like that, huh?" he asked his friends. Then he brought his slipper down square on Katrina's soft mounds and mashed them cruelly against her as she cried out with pain. She was beginning to feel a real terror as she looked fully into the man called Bertie's face and saw the expression of sadistic glee that made it so ugly.

"Hey, girl, here, girl," called one of the men, throwing a corn chip toward Katrina. It landed on the stone a few inches from her head. She paused, but as soon as she caught a glimpse of Bertie's foot going back for another kick, turned and ate the chip, picking it off the flagstone with her teeth.

After a while the men tired of their games, and Katrina was given the order to lie down, which she did as best she could, rolling back on her side. Bertie sat almost directly over her, slipping his slippers off and kneading her naked breasts with his stubby toes. But Katrina put up with the torture in order to concentrate on the conversation. But the men were talking about nothing which sounded important.

Then another burst of laughter went up from the group, and Katrina saw the trainer leading another grotesquely-dressed female toward the group. When she saw this one, she felt lucky, for the woman had been dressed up as a monkey. She had a costume that made her resemble a chimp, although it was cut away to expose the same basic elements that Katrina's did. Katrina stared in disbelief at the way the woman was walking, her legs bowed like a monkey's, until she saw the short cords that led from her ankles to what was apparently a sort of girdle under the monkey suit.

The men were even more delighted by the monkey and spent a long while putting her through her paces, insisting that she perform all the obscene gestures for which monkeys are noted. Katrina tried to close her eyes on the scene and figure out how she could relieve the ache in her back, which resulted from not being able to straighten her legs out, trussed as they were to her neck. But she was not to be left alone.

At the insistence of the group of men, the "monkey woman" began to tease Katrina, pulling her hair and even to the delight of the men pinching and pulling at her exposed breasts. Katrina's eyes filled with tears as she tried to avoid this new degradation. She couldn't understand how the other girl could do this, until she saw the look of delight .on her face. The other was jumping up and down, making monkey-like noises and hurting Katrina too much for her to ignore.

She hit out at the monkey with her paws, only to receive another kick, right between the legs, from her master. "C'mon," he snarled. "Fight like a real bitch!" he demanded, jerking Katrina to all fours. Katrina was overcome with confusion. But then the monkey got behind her and, as the men slapped their thighs with merriment, goosed her cruelly through the slit in the dog-costume. Katrina whirled and tried to jump the monkey woman. But the cord brought her up short, and she merely toppled on the other.

The monkey grabbed one of her dangling breasts in each hand and shook them mercilessly, causing Katrina to cry out. Doing the only thing she could in retaliation, Katrina lunged down with her head and sank her teeth into the other's ripe flesh. She actually felt a thrill of revenge as the monkey let go her globes and beat her fists on Katrina's head, before scrambling away.

All the rest of the day there was no let-up. By dinner-time, as she lay at her master's feet, Katrina was nauseated by her own rubbery smell of stale perspiration which emanated from the dog-suit. But it was after dinner, when the company had gathered in the building's great hall, that the worst came. Someone had let Katrina's Doberman back in, and he came snuffling over to her. Katrina saw with alarm that the animal was aroused for some reason, and she was more than star-tied when he went directly for her backside and tried to mount her. Then she realized that the suit must have been impregnated with something that dogs react to. For before she could defend herself, he was driving at her like a fiend, his excitement increased by the cheers and yelling from the men.

Katrina collapsed to her elbows as she felt her sides embraced by the frantic male brute. And again she was forced to cry out as he missed his mark, bruising her delicate flesh before he rammed his way into her. This was the best show yet, and Bertie prolonged it by dragging Katrina around by her chain, so that she was forced to crawl after him as the dog hung crazily on her and pounded against her.

Later, up in Bertie's bedroom, she had to undergo this particular disgrace a third time. Bertie's eyes gleamed with vicarious pleasure as Katrina crouched on the bedroom floor, trying to make it easy for the dog so that he wouldn't tear her to ribbons. Then, when the dog had taken his pleasure, it was the man's turn. Stripping his fat, repellent body naked, Bertie flung himself on Katrina, just as the dog had.

But he was seeking a different kind of pleasure, nowhere near as innocent as the Doberman's. Katrina screamed in pain, and her sobs filled the room as the fat, grunting man ravaged her body in a way that she had never thought possible. And later, as she lay on the hard floor, trying to find a position to sleep in that would afford some relief to her vilely abused body, she planned how she would search for the corpulent sadist when she got out, and what she would do to him when she met him in the outside world.

Katrina was waked early in the morning by her trainer, who unfastened the cords and beckoned her to follow him. She had to lean on him for support, her back hurt so badly, as they left the bedroom. Once down in the room she had been outfitted in, he helped her out of the whole wretched outfit and made her take a shower in a nearby facility. While she was working to scrub the filth from her battered body, another woman came in and Katrina recognized her instantly as the one who had played the role of the monkey that day.

"Darling, hello!" gushed the monkey-woman. "Is this your first weekend? It's mine! Isn't it just too super?"

Katrina eyed the woman with suspicion. She didn't see anything at all super about it, but she didn't want to give herself away.

"What are you going to be doing today? I've got Santis a divine man; craves you-know-what." The woman made an obscene gesture that turned Katrina's stomach. "He can't get enough of it. Isn't it fab being here?"

"It's neat," replied Katrina evenly, trying to appear more aloof than this giddy young thing. "But I am new here who are all these men? Do they own this place?"

"Of course, darling," laughed the other, slipping into the shower and making a great sensuous show out of soaping her body. "They own the whole island, all the other islands; they own everything. If you get a good rep here, you've got it made anywhere in the world!"

"Have you got it made?" asked Katrina.

"Have I!" scoffed the other. "Listen, sweetheart, I was a staffer at St. Mondulac for six years. And you know how bad that is just about a cut above what they do at the Sandozes. Only there, instead of getting blackmail pix, we work strictly on a couple basis. You get the husband and wife into a Sandozes-type set, see? And you threaten them right on the spot with exposure."

"Quite a system," agreed Katrina. "But why did you leave it for this?"

"Are you kidding?" asked the other, stepping out of the shower and toweling herself vigorously. "Where else in the world could you find all this, and be in on so much fun. But if you really want to know, there are people who would give their left tit to be here, and I'm one of them for a simple reason. If you prove yourself here, and Napoleon trusts you, you can get yourself cut into the syndicate. Imagine! A whole setup of your own. An island even!"

The girl stopped her enthusiastic babbling as the trainer came over and took the damp towel from her.

Katrina noticed that several other girls had been brought to the room. All of them were decked out in extraordinary costumes or decorations. It was like a wax museum of horrors come to life.

Katrina nudged her informant, wanting more information. "This Napoleon. Does he live here?"

"Only on the weekends," the other replied. "But he spends most of his time in the conservatory. That's where the syndicate has its headquarters. He flies in for the weekend. And flies out for the week tending to business. Got to keep the operations ship-shape, you know."

At this point, they were interrupted by the trainer, who came over to them and opened what, it seemed to Katrina, was some sort of elaborate make-up kit.

"Glad you girls get along so well together," he rasped. "You'll be working together tonight. Stand still!"

Taking out a variety of tubes and beauty devices, the trainer went to work on Katrina first. With oversized lipsticks, he decorated her body, drawing multicolored rings and lines around her breasts and down her sides and front. Then he did the same to the other girl. They resembled two rejects from a lollipop factory, thought Katrina, with the first amusement she had felt all day.

The trainer handed them a slip of paper and sent them out of the room. Apparently, her companion knew what it was all about, for she led the way without hesitation, winding through the endless galleries and staircases. Katrina followed her along, memorizing as best she could what she assumed was the basic plan of the building. When they had reached something like the third floor above the main hall and gone along a long, narrow passageway, the other girl halted.

"That door leads to the conservatory," she whispered. Katrina looked in the direction the other pointed to and saw a door at the end of the passage. "You get in there," her friend whispered, "and you've made it, honey. You've got more power than the chairman of U.S. Steel!"

Then the door they were standing in front of opened. The girl went in, and Katrina followed. Inside was a bare room, with nothing but a mattress on the floor. Or so Katrina thought until she looked at the ceiling and saw the banks of spotlights that hung there. And as she was studying them, the normal light in the room was suddenly extinguished. The spotlights started glowing to life in a fantastic random pattern of colored illumination.

Something moved in the rainbow atmosphere something that looked like a moving prism. Then Katrina realized that it was a human figure, a male body, which had been decorated like her own body and that of the other. Decorated with designs that contained fluorescent pigments. What a lovely sight, she thought, as she noticed how the designs changed under the different colors of the flashing lights. None of them were moving. But their bodies seemed plastic seemed to flow and eddy like abstract designs shimmering in the air.

The figure whoever he was, stepped forward and lay casually down on the mattress, although his motions made the swirling lines on his body resemble a fluent and changing portrait in elastic neon. Katrina's companion lay down on one side of the man, and when she hesitated, motioned Katrina to the other side of him.

Katrina took the cue and stretched out. When she was on the mattress, looking up, she noticed the mirror that hung directly over them. In it their reflections became a miraculously coalesced image of vibrant, pulsing colors. Katrina felt the man's hand slide over her body and, turning her head, saw that his other hand was on her companion.

It did not take long, so relieved was she by this particular diversion after the previous day's cruel sport, for Katrina to join in the love-making being initiated by the other two. Only this time, as at few other times in her life, as their three bodies became endlessly intertwined in passionate juxtaposition, Katrina never shut her eyes watching with hypnotic fascination the display of light and color that accompanied the physical convolutions that eventually swept her away into the night's lengthy lustful program.