Part 12 (1/2)

The mate came in behind them, grinning, to serve a half-and-half mixture of rum and hot coffee. Bolan tasted it and decided against it. He got out of the uniform which Evita had borrowed from the town constable and carefully folded it and placed it on a bunk.

The mate was very taken with the black combat suit He grinned at Juan, murmured, ”Magnifico, magnifico”-and went back on deck.

Juan stared into his cup and announced, ”I killed a man, Senor Senor Bolan.” Bolan.”

How many had Bolan killed?

He said, ”Yeah, I noticed,” and spread out a map which Evita had given him during those tense moments at Puerta Vista. He sat at the table with the map, gave Juan a close scrutiny, then added, ”A man has a right to protect his treasures. No, he has an obligation.”

”If I had your skills, senor senor,” Juan replied quietly, ”I would kill them all. They are sc.u.m, filth-they are wild beasts with no humanity in them.”

”That's what I keep telling myself,” Bolan muttered.

”My Rosalita. You think she is safe now?”

”She's entirely safe, Juan. Don't worry, she's in good hands.”

”She told me, before, at the first, that you would come. But she also hoped that you would not. She was fearful for you, senor.” * senor.” * Bolan said, ”How're you feeling?” Bolan said, ”How're you feeling?”

”Fine. I am feeling like a man. I envy you, senor senor.”

”Don't,” Bolan growled. ”You have life where it's all at, amigo amigo. Place of your own, a decent life, a good woman to share it with, a kid coming to give it all meaning. What is there left to envy?”

”You are right.''

Bolan fell to studying the map. He shoved it toward Juan and tapped a spot with his finger. ”Tell the captain to put me in there at precisely midnight.”

The boy finished his rum-coffee and moved toward the door.

Bolan said, ”Juan... I'm d.a.m.n proud of you.”

This drew a flas.h.i.+ng smile. ”You rest,” Juan told him. ”I will take the watch on deck until midnight.”

”Thanks. To tell the truth, I'm about out of my head. I can't remember the last time I slept.”

”Sleep now, Senor Magnifico Senor Magnifico. I have never myself felt more awake in all of my life.”

The kid went out, and Bolan tumbled onto a bunk.

Yeah.

Sleep now.

Kill later.

It was not over yet Jack Grimaldi eased the company car into Gla.s.s Bay and pulled up behind the office. The blackened hulk of the main house stood grimly deserted but both bungalows were blazing with light and some sort of noise contest seemed to be going on between the two. The boys had come back with booze and women, and quite a party was underway. The amplified throbbing of recorded rock was blasting from both camps above the hubbub of male voices and the gay shrieks of hired women.

As Grimaldi stepped out of the car a nude cutey burst from a doorway above the carport and ran laughing down the stairs with a guy in jockey shorts chasing close behind. They ran past him without a glance, headed toward the beach.

It was a celebration. A wake for Bolan, Grimaldi guessed.

He avoided the bungalows and went to the gra.s.sy area behind the carports. Air Two sat there gleaming in the moonlight, deserted and forlorn with her work all done. The pilot from San Juan was no doubt partying it up with the hardmen, celebrating a death which all Mafiadom had been working toward.

Grimaldi slid inside and checked the fuel situation., It was terrible.

He returned to the carport and found a five-gallon can, took it to the gas pump, and began the laborious process of refueling the 'copter.

Grimaldi did not feel like partying.

Nor did he feel like hanging around Gla.s.s Bay any longer than was absolutely necessary.

It was a thirty minute job of pumping, lugging, and filling-over and over again-and the party had lost no steam at all during that period.

He made an extra trip, for future contingencies, and secured the five-gallon spare inside the cabin of the helicopter.

Grimaldi was getting the h.e.l.l out of Puerto Rico, as fast as those rotors would carry him.

It had been a h.e.l.l of a day, though, and he needed one final item for the road. He entered the end bungalow through the kitchen door, shoved a clinched half-nude couple out of the way, and snared a bottle of bourbon from the open case on the table.

The guy was a total stranger and the girl was drunk. She mumbled something like ”For favor” and Grimaldi muttered, ”Yeah, same to you,” and went back outside. and Grimaldi muttered, ”Yeah, same to you,” and went back outside.

The moon was high and Gla.s.s Bay was basking in its soft radiance. A paradise, sure. Under somewhat different circ.u.mstances, Grimaldi could have really enjoyed the joint. But those sheet-wrapped bodies were still laid out over there. By morning they would be stinking. He s.h.i.+vered and went the other way. Couldn't they at least dump their dead before the orgy?

He went on around to the front and gazed out across the bay as he opened the bottle. Bahia de Vidria Bahia de Vidria, the bay of gla.s.s. Yeah, broken gla.s.s, shattered, and n.o.body would ever put the pieces back together again. Not for Jack Grimaldi, that was for sure.

He heard a boat chugging along somewhere in the distance, and he wondered how ordinary people made the pieces of their lives fit, how they used their mundane lives, how they bridged the awful gulfs between hope and despair, dreams and disillusionment, challenge and failure.

Jack Grimaldi's life had been failing steadily since birth.

Life itself was one big schtick schtick.

But Grimaldi was not yet quite ready to write it all off. He had not even reached the midpoint yet... he hoped. In a few more months he'd be thirty. Maybe. Twice this day he had stared into death, and twice he had walked away from that unsettling view. It was enough to make a guy think.

He took a deep pull from the bottle, choked, wiped the spillage away, and looked at his watch. Ten minutes past midnight.

Yeah, it had been a h.e.l.l of a day.

He stared back around the b.u.med-out hulk and walked straight into the big mean b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the black suit.

He was wearing one of those tight, mirthless smiles, and he said, ”Enjoying the party, Jack?”

Goodbye, thirtieth birthday. So the son of a b.i.t.c.h had made it through, after all.

Grimaldi sighed and said, ”Okay, where do you want to go this time?”

The guy chuckled-like a skeleton clearing its throat. ”You got some wings?”