Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 2, April 1961

“I know.” Johnny stooped to enter the seven-by-twelve cabin. It was barely furnished: a wooden bench along each side, wheel and compass at the forward end; one-burner stove and water keg aft. He dumped his load on one of the benches. “Let’s go.”

The short-keeled craft rode the heavy sea like a cork. Albert, fighting the wheel, said the waves came from a hurricane somewhere out in the Atlantic. Johnny found a steel file, tried to put an edge on the cutlass, filed the skin off three knuckles, and quit.

The sea calmed when they entered the lee of Laborie. The island rose from the sea as a single steep ridge. Tall grass clothed its upper slope, combed and parted by the endless wind. On the shore, coconut palms and breadfruits brooded over black shingle shacks.

The boat nosed into a horseshoe bay fringed by a beach as white as salt; as empty as Death Valley. Johnny pointed to a weathered, two-story building which stood a quarter-mile from the village. “That the hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“Drop anchor.”

Johnny squatted on deck and raised the binoculars. The hotel seemed near enough to touch. A half-dozen rattan chairs stood empty on a wide gallery. A ping-pong net sagged on a table, and a copy of Reader’s Digest lay open on the floor.

The dreamy peace made Johnny’s chest ache. “The guy wasn’t all stupid,” he said. “He picked a great place.”

“A great place to die,” said Albert.

Johnny grimaced. The kid was a crepe-hanger, probably giggled at funerals.

For an hour the hotel stood as quiet as a bar on Election Day. Then a woman came out and walked across the narrow beach. Her features looked European, but she walked like a West Indian, with shoulders back and pelvis thrust forward. Beneath a white terrycloth robe her legs were a light toasted brown.

Johnny pegged her tentatively as a Creole from Martinique.

At the water she dropped the robe, stood for a moment while the sun bounced off her bright orange bikini, then ran into the surf with a squeal that reached Johnny as the squeak of a very small mouse. He wondered whether she lived in the hotel or only worked there; either way, she’d complicate the operation. He’d hoped to find the man alone.

Fifteen minutes later the woman came out, peeled off her bathing cap, and shook down a two-foot cascade of black hair. Johnny caught his breath as the peeling continued. The bra dropped to the sand; the pants joined them, following a downward jerk of her hands and a convulsion of her lips.

As she toweled herself with the robe, Johnny wondered why she’d even bothered with the bikini. Maybe bikinis were an island status symbol, as mink coats were at home. She was mighty go-to-hell about her nudity, the way she tossed the robe over one shoulder and sauntered up the steps into the hotel.

But there was no sign of the man he’d come to kill. Johnny ate his bully beef and biscuit without lowering the glasses. The day crawled into afternoon and the island curled up in the sun and slept.

Around two, Albert examined Johnny’s cutlass and said it would not cut an overripe mango. Johnny told him to sharpen it. For the next hour, the screech of the file slowly tied his nerves in a knot.

Finally he lowered the glasses. “I don’t aim to shave him, kid.”

“Man, you could.” Albert brushed the blade lightly over his forearm, leaving a patch bare of hair. He grinned. “Where you figure to cut him?”

Johnny raised the glasses. “You don’t plan that close, kid.”

“You wouldn’t let me...?”

“Hell, no. You’d louse it up.”

“Noooo, man—”

“Shut up.” A man in shorts had stepped out on the gallery. A bushy R.A.F. moustache curled back against hollow cheeks, and red blotches marred his features. But the large wet eyes and curly hair marked him as Howard McLain.

He slumped into a rattan chair, propped his feet on the railing, and raised a glass of something which looked like black Martinique rum. Johnny had drunk it once; nearly 150-proof, the stuff had gone down like velvet embedded with fishhooks. Howard McLain was drinking it like Pepsi-Cola.

Two more years, thought Johnny, and I wouldn’t have had to kill him.

The woman came out and sat down. She wore a red dress made of bandannas. Sitting beside McLain, she looked less European than she had on the beach. She lit a cigaret and held it out to McLain. He took a drag and returned it, absently caressing her leg. Their movements had a dreamy lassitude which to Johnny was unmistakeable; they’d, just gotten out of bed.

Well, that made it rough. No doubt they slept together at night. He felt a surge of sympathy for the dark-blonde woman coming four thousand miles to join her husband.

Johnny turned the glasses to the main village, marked by a wooden jetty which pointed a long finger into the bay. An unfinished schooner lay on the grassy savannah, its ribs bleaching in the sun like bones of a giant whale. Behind the savannah stood two stores, three rum-shops, and a square, concrete building which looked new.

A word above the door made Johnny’s heart stop: POLICE.