Nick Carter: The Black Death

Our last basement was that of a large apartment house at 79th and West End Avenue. Not bad when you consider that we had started at 84th and Amsterdam, in what had once been an Irish bar owned by a gentleman by the name of Toolan, and was now the headquarters of HIUS. Haitians in the United States.

The elevator was down and off somewhere I could see lights and hear a swift jumble of Spanish. Lyda led me around the open elevator and up a flight of stairs to a lobby as quiet and dark, and nearly as large, as a cathedral. Her high heels tick-tacked on the black and white tiles as we went through a glass door and came out on West End. It was a balmy night, soft and warm in the middle of April, unusual for the city at that time of year.

We walked toward the corner at 79th. It was only a little after eleven and there was a lot of traffic. Plenty of empty cabs cruising on West End. I moved over between Lyda and the curb and took her arm. She smiled at me and then laughed.

“No need to worry, Nick. I’m not going to run away.”

I nodded. “I know that, Lyda. I’m not going to let you run away. What we are going to do, you and I, is to go someplace and have a nice long talk about a number of things. That’s my job, and anyway I am a very curious man. Especially now, after that shooting match back there. So?”

I gave her my best smile. “Do we do it the easy way or the hard way?”

We stopped on the corner. I kept a light grip on her arm. To our left the blaze and cacophony of upper Broadway overwhelmed the night, kept back the darkness. People swarmed about us. The pavement vibrated as a train thundered to a stop at the 79th Street station. In the hard gaze of street lights, in washed neon, we studied each other. She stared at me, her eyes narrowed a bit, her straight little nose twitched and her brow furrowed, and I could see how hard she was thinking.

I didn’t push it. I gave her plenty of time. We were total strangers, this Lyda Bonaventure and me, and I had met her that evening for the first time. At eight o’clock in the social rooms of the HIUS. Steve Bennett, the CIA man, had set up the meeting. Now Bennett was dead and I had the ball and, at the moment, I was wondering just what the hell to do with it. One thing — I had to hang on to Lyda Bonaventure.

I watched her, alert for trickery, and waited. I wanted her to make the first move, to give me a lead, for so far I was going by guess and God and what little Hawk and Steve Bennett had been able to tell me.

She touched my hand. “Come on, Nick. Let’s walk down toward the river. By the time we get to Riverside Drive I’ll have made up my mind about you. One way or the other. I promise.”

We crossed West End and sauntered toward the Drive. I kept a hand crooked around her elbow. She moved slowly. I matched my stride to hers and said, “What’s the problem, Lyda? As I see it you have to trust me. Who else can you trust? You saw what happened back there just now. Papa Duvalier is on to your people. You’ve just seen how long his arm is. What more do you want? Without help, my help, you and your organization haven’t got a prayer. We want to help. Oh, I’ll admit it is to grind our own axe, but it is still help. The CIA has been helping you. But now they’re in a bind and can’t help you any more and we have been called in. Steve Bennett is dead back there, with his head blown off, because of you and your outfit. I might be dead because of you. So why the stalling, the coy bit? Do you or don’t you want to go into Haiti and bring out this Dr. Romera Valdez?”

She stopped abruptly, huddling against me and peering back the way we had come. There was nobody there but an old couple out for a stroll and a stray cat.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t talk about that! Not here.”

She was very close to me and her eyes were a deep brown and filled now with genuine terror. I felt like a heel. This kid was scared to death and had been trying not to show it. Doing a good job, too. But I was impatient. I gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “All right, then. Let’s get off the street and talk. You want to come up to my place? Or any other place where you can go and feel safe? The thing is — let’s get started.”

It occurred to me that, where she had been in such a tearing rush before, she was doing a lot of stalling now.

She gave me a final long stare and sort of sighed. “Yes. I suppose I will have to trust you. It’s just that so much is at stake — so much money and so many lives and so much planning. I can’t afford to make a mistake. I only wish I didn’t have to make this decision.”

I sort of clued her in then, nudged her along. I was beginning to feel a little naked myself, standing on 79th Street.

I said: “You have to make the decisions, don’t you? Aren’t you the boss lady. The one they call the Black Swan?”

1 gave her another little push. I laughed, not in humor, and said, “One thing we didn’t know was that you’re a female who can’t make up her mind!”

A thought struck me then and I added “But you had better make it up, and fast, or I’m going to wash the whole thing and leave you standing here alone. On your own. If you don’t want my help, I’m not going to force it on you. Goodbye, Black Swan.”

I dropped her arm and turned away. I wouldn’t have gone through with it, of course, but it was worth a try. I had to do something to get her off the razor’s edge and the real trouble was that I had no authority to arrest or hold her. Technically, if I took her into custody and held her I could be rapped for kidnapping. I didn’t want to do that unless I had to.

It worked. She came after me in a little run. “No! Don’t leave me alone. I’ll talk to you.”

“Good girl. Where? I’d rather not go to my place if I can help it.”

“No. I have a place. A boat. Over there in the 79th Street Basin. We can go there right now. Only I don’t want to stay in the Basin, Nick. If the Tonton Macoute could find the voodoo church they might be able to find the boat. If we lose the boat we lose everything! That’s why I–I’ve been hesitant about trusting you, Nick. The Sea Witch is our cause! I, we, have got everything invested in her. Can you handle a boat?”

I took her arm again and started her down toward Riverside Drive. Below the Drive the traffic flowed in a constant to and fro tide along the West Side Highway. Beyond the Highway the Hudson gleamed in light and shadow, broad and quiet and marred only by a string of barges being tugged upstream. Lights decked the Jersey shore and up at 96th Street the Spry sign blinked off and on.

“I can handle a boat,” I told her.

We passed a telephone kiosk and I resisted an urge to call Hawk and tell him what a mess I was in and ask him for orders. I had a feeling that Lyda Bonaventure was right. The sooner we got off the street and on the boat, and moved the boat, the safer I was going to feel.

I was curious, too. Bennett hadn’t said anything about a boat. The CIA hadn’t said anything about a boat. Hawk hadn’t said anything about a boat.

Now suddenly there was a boat and she was acting like it was worth a million dollars. I thought that maybe it was.

The Sea Witch was a Pembroke, a 57 footer, and she was a living doll. About $150,000 worth of sea-going express cruiser. When the girl said “boat” I hadn’t known what to expect — maybe anything from a skiff to a schooner — but I wasn’t prepared for the sleek glistening beauty that swung at double anchor a hundred feet out from the end of docking.

We went out to her in a metal dinghy that had Sea Witch stenciled on the stern in blue paint. No one paid any attention to us. The Basin was fairly crowded, with a couple of houseboats moored close in to shore, and the usual scatter of small craft bobbing like ducks on the tide. There was a black-painted schooner in, a real beauty, showing no lights, and a steel ketch where they were having a party. The music was very go-go, and by the sound of laughing and shouting they were going to make a night of it.