The Killer Touch Read Free Page B

within five miles of the island. Muscles corded in his powerful arms as he left the lagoon and entered the current. Five minutes later the boat thumped against the hull.
    â€œMist’ March,” he said, holding the boat steady as Burt clambered down. “I din’ expect you this time.”
    There was no time for conversation; Burt took his bulky canvas suitcase from the cabin boy, settled into the forward thwart, and helped push off. When they reached the peace of the lagoon, Burt saw that Coco wore a blue straw hat. The boatman had two other hats, one painted red, the other white. He changed them according to his mood: white when he felt good, blue when he was sad, and red when he was angry.
    â€œWhy the blue hat?” asked Burt.
    The boy spoke abruptly between strokes. “No guest. No fish. No tip.”
    â€œThe woman who’s staying here doesn’t fish?”
    â€œWoman?” Coco’s expression of disgust encompassed the entire sex. “I never take woman to fish. Too much play, too much talk.”
    â€œShe talks a lot, eh?”
    â€œShe? Man, I never see her. She remain in her cabin all day, walk the beach at night.”
    Frowning, Burt opened the side pocket of his bag and took out two rolls of film. “Here’s some new high-speed film. I guess you’ve still got that Brownie I gave you.”
    â€œYes.” Coco grinned. “Now I maybe change my hat, take you to catch big fish.”
    Coco tied up at a rickety jetty of poles and wood planks. It was attached to an unfinished concrete jetty begun by Joss’s fourth or fifth husband—who had also inaugurated a yacht basin, a hotel, and a new clubhouse, only to abandon the island and depart with a female guest from Barbados. He’d never come back, and Joss had never continued any of his projects.
    Burt stepped off the jetty and looked around. Nothing ever changed here; it could have been five years ago. He saw a figure floating at the south end of the lagoon, where the palms arched down and dipped their fronds in the surf. It could have been a corpse, it floated so still, so bonelessly complaisant to each ripple of water. But Burt recognized the mistress of the island, Jocelyn Leeds.
    â€œJoss!”
    No response. After fourteen years on the island, Joss was capable of falling asleep in the water. Her boys had to watch that she didn’t drift out to sea.
    Burt started down the beach. He saw smoke trailing up from a cigarette between her lips. A glass rested on the gentle mound of her stomach:
    â€œHey!” he called. “Hey, Joss!”
    â€œI’m full up,” she called without removing the cigarette. “You should’ve had O’Ryan wait.”
    â€œDon’t hand me that. Come and see what I brought you.”
    â€œNow who in the world—!” She twisted to look, but a wave broke over her face. She spat out her soggy cigarette, rolled over, and started stroking toward shore. Burt opened his suitcase, took out the green beach coat he’d brought her, and walked down to the edge of the surf. Joss rose in thigh-deep water and waded ashore. Her homemade bathing costume (it was too individualistic to be called anything else, a loose-fitting playsuit made of a cotton print) wetly outlined a figure which had once been, obviously, arrestingly full. Now, though resigning itself here and there to the pull of gravity, her shape was still good enough to draw whistles at a distance. Once she’d shown Burt an old picture of herself in a net bra and panties, both of which concealed no more than the absolute legal minimum. She’d refused to say whether she’d been a runway queen, a nightclub stripper, or a freelance exhibitionist; she drew a curtain of phony coyness over her entire past and was even vague about the number of her husbands. Burt wasn’t sure whether the Englishman from whom she’d inherited the island had been her third or fourth. Her hair