The Deadlier Sex Read online

  “But we still slip into the stereotype from time to time.” I shrugged. “Like I said—we’re sorry. It’s just that we’re impressed with what you’ve done here, that’s all. Forgiven?”

  She looked at me for a long moment, the awkward fierceness draining from her face. Obviously, it was an uncomfortable role for her—that of the female militant. She cleared her throat. “Yes, of course you’re forgiven. And please understand why I was so short with you. It’s just that the little things become such irritants. And we’ve worked so very, very hard here.”

  “I can see that, Saxan.”

  She glanced around the office. Overhead, a ceiling fan labored with the heavy June heat. Outside, you could hear occasional laughter reminiscent of a girls’-school playground. “It is beautiful here, isn’t it?”

  “Aye, it is, it is.”

  Saxan smiled wanly. “I wish I could say that I had masterminded the whole project, but that wouldn’t be true.” She seemed as happy as we were to change the subject. She talked on about the goals of her organization and the island itself. She had been hired by SELF four years earlier to teach practical botany at the organization’s various outpost schools—and she had given up an assistant professorship to do it.

  “Basically, SELF is a temporary haven,” she said. “There’s a lot of bad that can happen to a woman in the outside world. Our goal is to provide an organization where women in trouble—any kind and any degree of trouble—can go for help. With us, they can reeducate themselves, or rekindle their interests. Or just plain rest.”

  “It sounds like a worthwhile cause, Saxan.”

  She made a little church with her hands, then opened them: see all the people. “I think so. As I said, there are a lot of bad things that can happen to a woman.”

  “Like Barbara?”

  She sighed wearily. “God, how awful that must have been. The very idea of being trapped on a boat with those . . . those animals.”

  She shook herself.

  “But Barbara seems to already be handling it pretty well—thanks, apparently, to some of the classes she’s taken here.”

  Saxan Benton nodded. But she didn’t have time to reply. Through the laughter and summer quiet of the island came a distant piercing scream. A woman’s scream; nothing playful about it. Without hesitating, the beautiful woman with the auburn hair was on her feet and running.

  And the Irishman and I were right behind.

  It was a woman all right.

  One of the nude ones we had seen on the way in.

  Saxan went curving this way and that along the shell paths across the island. Other women were on the run, too—all hurrying toward the source of the screams. She ran well. Surprisingly well. Usually, women run with the awkward swinging of hips and shoulders that mark the untrained athlete.

  But not this woman. It was all I could do to keep up with her, all three of us running dead out, the Irishman lagging slightly behind with his stocky bulk.

  “The beach!” she yelled. “The screams are coming from the beach!”

  Caught in a flashing still life, I saw that her perfect face was pale, and her autumn-hued hair swung across the small of her back in disarray. For the first time I saw what she must have looked like as a little girl—frail and troubled.

  “Any idea who it might be?”

  “Those bastards . . . if it’s those bastards again . . .” And she left the rest unfinished, saying little but implying much.

  They were net fishermen. Four of them. The oldest looked to be in his mid-twenties. He had greasy black hair and a couple days’ growth of beard. His white T-shirt had turned brown with sweat stain and lack of washing. He wore soiled jeans and white rubber fishing boots, and there was a suggestion of a tattoo beneath the black thatch of forearm hair. The other three were similarly dressed but younger. They stood shoulder to shoulder on the beach, laughing drunkenly while their tattooed leader played tough guy with the girl who had been sunbathing.

  It was the one with the Polynesian black hair we had seen on the way in. Hers was the oriental face of the islands. Long oiled hair, dark hips and breasts. Tattoo had her by the elbow, trying to make her dance with him. She alternately slapped at him and tried to cover herself with her free hand.

  “Come on now, bitch!”

  The girl gave a ferocious jerk, pulled away, and took only three steps before one of the others stuck his foot out and tripped her. She fell heavily in the sand, fat hips and thighs jiggling when she landed.

  “Stop that immediately!” Saxan Benton didn’t even slow down. She was hell-bent on making the rescue her own way—until I grabbed her.

  “Damn it, hold on! O’Davis and I will take care of those guys.”

  She whirled on me. “Don’t do that again—don’t touch me again! And we don’t need your help!”

  It was like an echo of something Barbara had told me aboard Sniper: “We can take care of ourselves just fine.”

  And then I saw what they meant. From behind us, on the path, a half-dozen women with billyclubs came running towards us. Their hair hung from beneath the white riot helmets they wore. A couple of them still wore bikinis from swimming, and the others wore cutoff jeans. Holstered on thick gunbelts were cans of mace. When they reached the beach, they immediately stopped running and began to march in tight formation toward the four fishermen.

  Stupidly, the men began to laugh and taunt when they saw the women coming. Their plastic face masks were up, and there was no mistaking what each and every one of the women had in mind.

  “Sweet Jesus,” said Westy. He stood beside me, hands on hips, breathing heavily.

  “Looks like it could be messy,” I agreed.

  “Brother MacMorgan, I notice that yer takin’ a dip of yer fine strong Copenhagen. Does that mean what I think it means?”

  I motioned toward Saxan Benton. “She told me to stay out of it.”

  “But I’m a-thinkin’ that certain people on the beach there are in serious danger of dyin’, Yank.”

  I returned the tin of spent Copenhagen to my shirt pocket, feeling the good burn of the snuff upon my lip. “The women?”

  “Hah!” he snorted. “The men, you thickheaded snit!”

  “Just testing you, O’Davis. Let’s go—and you take the two guys wearing knives.”

  “Yer a wonderful friend, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan.”

  Against Saxan’s wild protestation, the two of us went trotting past Mahogany Key’s version of a riot squad. The fishermen weren’t prepared for a man-to-man confrontation, and it subdued them momentarily. With their attention diverted, I noticed that the Polynesian girl had finally scampered to safety. One of the other women wrapped her in a towel, and she buried her face in her palms, crying softly.

  “Hey there now, boys, you two ain’t involved in this!” Tattoo had retreated just enough at our approach so that he stood at the edge of the water with his three greasy friends. None of them was particularly big. Tattoo was right at six feet, 180 pounds, maybe. The others weren’t as big, but they all had that dirty look; that attitude of meanness which implies a background of bar fights and knifings.

  I noticed that they all reached for their knives now.

  I stopped about six feet from Tattoo. O’Davis was an imposing hulk right beside me. “Why don’t you fellows just jump in your two mullet skiffs there and get the hell off this island before you get hurt?”

  Tattoo had his folding knife in his left hand, palming it. “An’ just who in the hell is gonna make us, buddy boy?”

  I made myself chuckle, rolling the snuff in my lip. “I got a feeling those women behind us got plans of making little tiny grease spots of you boys.”

  “Shit.”

  He drawled it out, using the impact of the word to cover the short steps he was taking toward me. I knew what he had planned: get in a good overhand shot with the knife, and then help his friends handle the Irishman. These were Everglades fishermen, boys who had grown to manhood living the roughest and dirtiest of lives.
Fighting was a way of life for them—and they played for keeps.

  “Unless you want to learn to say grace through your asshole, you’d better stow that knife, kid.”

  “Shit . . .”

  The knife came up in a round overhand arc toward my face. But I was ready for it. I hit him with a glob of amber spittle right in the eyes, then easily ducked under the knife when the acid impact of the snuff temporarily blinded him.

  “Goddamn, man!” He bent away from me, clawing at his eyes. It was too good a target. Just couldn’t pass it up. I gave him the best my right Topsider had to offer, smack in the butt. It sent him wheeling through the shallows, head down, until he collided unexpectedly with the big wooden mullet skiff he had anchored there. There was an impressive thunk, and Tattoo collapsed in the water face up, a thin trickle of blood oozing from his forehead.

  I had hoped that the ease with which I handled their leader would scare the other three off. But it didn’t. The first of them came charging at me like an old feral boar, case knife held low. I was ready for him, had my moves planned—when two of the riot squad women stepped in front of me. At the last moment, they stepped away from his charge in the way a matador would turn away from a bull, then both clubbed him solidly behind the head. It is a sickening sound, that moist whack of wood against bone, and I noticed in the instant that it didn’t even seem to bother them. The two women stood there and watched him melt into the sand, holding his head in agony. They were both big women—tall, rawboned, but amply endowed with female accouterments.

  “Take that, you bastard!”

  I was about to say something when the last two fishermen made their charge. They hit the two women from behind, driving them down to the ground. They got in a couple of good kidney punches before I finally pulled them off. From the corner of my eye, I could see the other members of the enforcer squad moving into position. But I didn’t want them to help. I don’t like to be anywhere near when billyclubs are being swung.

  The first guy I pulled off was quick. And damn tough. He twisted suddenly to the left, then came back hard with his right elbow and caught me full in the nose. To the ears of the victim, the sound of cartilage exploding is unmistakable. Blood shot down across my blue shirt, and my eyes watered so badly that I could barely see. He hit me chinhigh with two quick rights, and I caught the third on the rebound. I folded his arm behind him, busted a couple of ribs with one short left, then hit him hard beneath the ear with a full fist. He went down in my blood patch in the sand and didn’t stir.

  The last of them no longer liked the odds. He was a greasy little blond guy with a nose like a letter opener. He backed away from me, hands fending me off.

  “Hey, I’m convinced, buddy, I’m convinced.”

  “Then tell you what, you little twerp—stick these lunchmeat friends of yours in those skiffs. Then you walk back here real nice and polite and apologize to these women.”

  “I didn’t even touch them—”

  “Move!”

  So he moved. And then came back nice and polite, made his apologies to a hundred or so stony female faces, then roared off—turning only to give us that universal one-fingered sign of contempt when he was safely away.

  O’Davis came up beside me. My eyes were still watering, and I could barely distinguish his face.

  “Ye seem to be bleedin’, brother MacMorgan.”

  “Astute, O’Davis. You’re a shrewd one.”

  “Is it that yer face is now crooked, or could it be that yer fine Scottish nose has been mashed?”

  “A broken nose will just give me more character.”

  “Ah, that’s true. An’ I understand that certain fat ladies react very kindly ta a nose like that one. Appeals to their maternal instincts—or so I hear.”

  “O’Davis?”

  “Aye, Yank?”

  “Do you want to tell me now why you let me fight those three guys by myself—or do you want to surprise me later?”

  “Well, it’s like this, ya see. Now didn’t ya say meself was to take the two with knives? Aye, ye did. Well now, they all had knives. So I jest decided to be polite an’ take the ones ye dinna want. Frankly, Yank, I feel ye were a bit hoggish.”

  “You’re a wonderful friend—Mr. Westy O’Davis.”

  “Ah, ’tis true. An’ keep yer head back, Yank—yer leakin’ turrible.”

  I felt a warm hand touch my shoulder, and then another press some tissue into my hands.

  “Are you all right, Dusky?”

  It was Saxan Benton.

  “My friend here says that I’ve suddenly become rather ugly. Other than that, I’m just fine.”

  I was surprised by the tone her voice took, and by the way she squeezed my arm. “And I couldn’t disagree with your friend more.”

  “Were any of your . . . women hurt?”

  “I don’t think so—but they’re going to the infirmary for a checkup. And so are you, by the way.”

  “No, I think we’ll just get back on my boat.”

  “I’ll not hear another word about it.”

  “Saxan, it’s really not necessary—”

  “Not another word!”

  8

  She came to my bed that night.

  I didn’t know who it was at first.

  But it didn’t take me long to find out.

  We had allowed ourselves to be talked into spending the night. I wanted to stay and get a better reading on these women of Mahogany Key. But like the island’s director, Saxan Benton, no summary statements were to be had. For a while everything would check out; all facts and personalities fitting into neat little categories. But then some small thing would happen, or I would come across an indecipherable look, or some stray fact, and my tidy presumptions would crack like old china.

  The Irishman wanted to stay for obvious—and maybe better—reasons. As he put it: “Dusky, me boy, we’ve been invited to spend the evening on this fine tropical island. Now, need I remind you, this is not jest any tropical island. This island is inhabited by five score and more of the finest-lookin’ ladies a poor Irish lad like meself could ever hope fer. An’ do ye realize, brother MacMorgan, that in certain courts of law in this fine land, we could be committed ta various mental institutes fer refusin’!”

  “I’m not sure I believe that, O’Davis.”

  “Well, if it ’tis not true, Yank, it should be.”

  So we stayed.

  Saxan Benton had walked me to the infirmary, leading me by the arm. My face hurt like hell, and with the adrenaline still drugging its way through my brain, it was tough to be civil.

  “I guess I should be thanking you,” she had said.

  “Another Kleenex would do just as well.”

  “But I did tell you that we could handle it.”

  I pulled my arm away. “I guess I should have just let those goons beat your two enforcer-squad girls to death when they had them on the ground, huh?”

  “They’re not girls!”

  “Well, they sure as hell fought like it.”

  “For your information, all six of them are martial-arts experts!”

  “Maybe they ought to wear signs—scare the local fishermen away.”

  She took my arm again, trying to shake me. “You can be so fine and sincere sometimes, and then turn right around and be a regular ass—why is that?”

  “I’m acting like an ass, huh?”

  “Yes!”

  “Hmm . . . I guess you’re right, Saxan. I guess that means we finally have something in common, huh?”

  She could have exploded. But she didn’t. I sniffed and cleared my eyes enough to see the look of stern authority melt from her face. And then the laughter came, fringed with a certain shyness. She found me looking down into her eyes, and quickly averted them the way a child with crossed eyes might.

  “I’m funny, huh?”

  “Yes. And you’re a mess. Here’s the infirmary—and I think you’ll like your nurse. It’s Barbara.”

  While Barbara worked on me, W
esty went for a walk—said there was much of the island he hadn’t seen. She tittered at that. The other women in the small clapboard infirmary gave indifferent looks. It was a small room with cot and stainless-steel instruments, and it smelled of alcohol and balsam shampoo.

  “So how are you feeling, Barbara?” Her nurse’s uniform consisted of shorts and a striped blouse with buttons that strained against the weight of their two charges. She had showered and scrubbed her tan face pink, and she smelled of soap.

  “Oh, a hell of a lot better.”

  “Where did you learn to swear like that?”

  She looked at me for a moment, and when she was sure I wasn’t condemning her, she smiled and said, “I guess I do swear a lot, huh? Maybe it’s because I never did as a kid. And my overgrown husband—hold that tape right there for a sec, huh?—my husband didn’t think it was ladylike. The bastard.” She chuckled again as if enjoying the simple freedom of profanity. “I guess you know your nose is broken, huh?”

  “Crossed my mind. How crooked is it going to be?”

  “Well—here, before I tape it solid, let me show you.” She walked across the room, the firmness of her making the wooden floor creak. She got a steel surgical mirror and came back toward me, polishing it on her shirtail. For the first time, oddly, I noticed that her legs—compact and well formed—weren’t shaved. She stopped before the table where I sat. “Hey, before we do anything else, let’s get rid of that shirt. You’re going to stain the floors.”

  I stood up, stripped off the shirt, and turned to face her, wadding it up in a ball. I’m never ready for the wide-eyed look and the sudden intake of breath when a woman sees me for the first time with my shirt off. I’d like to think it was my physique—but I know better. One long-gone night off the coast of Coronado while I was in SEAL training a big misplaced dusky shark tried to make a meal of me. I lived—barely. The shark didn’t. And I came out of the attack with a new nickname and 148 stitches that left a full-moon scar that starts at my abdomen and circles down across my pelvis.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” she whispered.