Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 2, April 1961

“Hold on.” She cradled the phone in the hollow of her shoulder and counted her money. Sixty — plus the refund^- on her return airline ticket. She could charter the plane and have enough left for cigarets and a meal or two. After that...

“Better be there, Howard,” she whispered, then said aloud; “I’d like to go tomorrow. Can you make arrangements?”

“The pilot cannot be reached until eight tomorrow. I’m off duty.”

“Oh. Well, call me at six in the morning.”

She hung up, stripped, showered, and slid naked between the cool, tingling sheets. As she switched off the light, her thoughts drifted to the tall man who’d gone behind customs in San Juan. He’d called himself a businessman, but there was something hard and exciting about him. She wondered what excitement he was finding in Trinidad.

The Zinia was built high, like a Mississippi river boat. Johnny shared the enclosed top deck with a dozen passengers, some barrels and boxes of cargo, and thick diesel fumes which boiled up from the engines below.

Within two hours he had a thumping headache. It wasn’t eased by the red-skinned man who sprawled on the wooden crate beside him and harangued Johnny about his tropical bird stuffing business. Between pulls on a quart of Mount Gay rum, the man tried to persuade Johnny to find him a stateside market for his birds. Johnny began to regret his businessman cover.

Albert, meanwhile, ranged the ship like a member of the crew, talking in their burbling French-African patois. It reminded Johnny of men talking with their heads under water. Around three a.m., Johnny had just fallen asleep with his head against a coil of rope when Albert shook him.

“Got something to show you, man.”

Johnny followed him down the ladder and onto the open bow of the ship. The open sea looked like crinkled tinfoil in the moonlight. The ship was plunging, and a southeast wind whipped Johnny’s shirt against his body. He watched Albert pull a long, broad-bladed knife-from between two crates. It curved backward like a cavalry saber.

“Here’s your cutlass, chief,” said Albert proudly, holding it out by the point.

Johnny grasped the blade and flipped it, feeling the handle smack into his palm. A spiral of black tape was wrapped around the handle. “Nice balance. Where’d you get it?”

Albert’s eyes gleamed with pleasure. “Found it in the crew’s quarters.”

Johnny felt a quiet anger rise inside him. He held out the cutlass, the point nearly touching Albert’s stomach. “Put it back.”

“Hell. No, man—.”

Johnny touched the point against Albert’s skin. The kid sucked in his belly and jumped back, clapping his hand to the spot. “Jesus!”

Johnny spoke softly: “Don’t go out on a limb without orders from me. How’d you expect to get that through St. Vincent customs?”

Albert, looking sheepish, lifted the cutlass from Johnny’s hand. “I guess I can learn things from you.”

Johnny felt a touch of pity for the kid. “You’d be better off learning to drive a taxi. Now take the cutlass back.”

At nine a.m. the Zinia anchored in the shallow harbor at Kingstown, St. Vincent. Johnny and Albert reached shore in a bathtub-sized boat. A ring of mountains trapped the air and a white, blazing sun brought it to oven-heat. By the time Johnny had been filtered through customs, sweat trickled down his back in a lukewarm stream.

“Can you run a launch?” he asked Albert.

“Anything that floats, I can handle,” grinned Albert. “If you want, I’ll have one at the long jetty in an hour.”

“Do that,” said Johnny, and walked out into the cobbled streets of Kingstown.

He bought ten cans of Argentine beef, a tin of ship’s biscuits, a half dozen cans of evaporated milk, and a pair of Japanese binoculars. If his plan worked, he’d go ashore in Laborie only once.

In a general merchandise store, he bought a cheap cardboard suitcase, a pair of black trousers, a black long-sleeved jersey, and a pair of black silk stockings. When night came, he hoped to be as invisible as the piano player in a strip-tease show.

“Wrap all this stuff together,” he told the clerk.

The Indian went to the rear of the store and Johnny carried the suitcase to a wooden rack containing a gross of cutlasses, fresh from Manchester and smelling of cosmoline. He looked around quickly, then jerked out a cutlass and slid it into the suitcase. Now he had one that couldn’t be traced.

Johnny walked back to the waterfront and found Albert pacing the deck of a thirty-foot ex-Navy launch which looked as though it had been caught in a crossfire at Leyte Gulf. Gray paint peeled off its sides and many of the cabin ports were broken.

“Best I could do, chief,” Albert said as Johnny came abroad. “Thirty bucks a day and skin-diving gear goes with it.”

“It’ll do. Get your cable sent?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. So your skin is safe for another day.”

“Chief, I gotta—”