So that was very much that, until the night I was driving along the Avenida Andenes on the Ibizan waterfront and almost ran over a drunk lying in the middle of the road. Or at least I thought he was drunk until I got out and turned him over and found he was just another hippie, stoned to the eyes.
He had the usual Jesus haircut, a scarlet headband holding it in place, giving him the look of some Apache Indian, an impression reinforced by the lean, ravaged face, deeply tanned by the Ibizan sun.
He wore a linen kaftan and a silver chain belt at his waist, jeans and open sandals. You could have seen dozens like him any day of the week sitting at the tables of the open-air cafes along the waterfront, but in this case there was a significant difference. The Medal of Honor on the end of the silver chain about his neck.
Even then I didnt recognise Turk in this gaunt, ravaged man, until he opened his eyes, gazed up at me unwinkingly in the light of the headlamps and without any kind of surprise at all said gravely, And hows every little thing with you, General?
I didnt live in Ibiza town myself at that time. I was operating out of a tiny fishing village called Tijola on a creek near Port Roig a few miles further along the coast. I didnt need to take Turk home with me as it turned out. He had a boat moored down by the breakwater in Ibiza harbour, a thirty-foot seagoing launch, the Mary Grant, from which he operated as a freelance skin-diver, although he seldom ventured beyond the Botafoc lighthouse, preferring to earn his bread in more devious ways.
But much of this I was to discover later and on that first night, I only knew that he had changed almost beyond recognition. That he was a sick man was obvious and when I got him down to the saloon he was barely able to stand.
He sank into a chair, head in hands for a moment, then stood up slowly and leaned on the table. Youll have to excuse me for a minute, General, I need an aspirin or something.
He went into the aft cabin leaving the door slightly ajar, enough for me to see his reflection in a mirror on the cabin wall when I peered in. He had rolled up his left sleeve and was tying a cord around the forearm. As he took a hypodermic from a drawer, I turned away.
He came into the saloon rubbing his hands together briskly, an entirely different person just like the after man in the patent medicine adverts. He took a bottle of brandy from a cupboard and found a couple of reasonably clean glasses.
He pushed one across to me and raised the other in a kind of mock toast. To you and me, General, he said. Together again - the old firm.
And then he started to laugh uproariously.
For a year now he had been going downhill a little bit more each day, slowly being eaten alive by some worm within him. Whatever it was, he never discussed it. He lived entirely in the present moment, blotting out past and future with either a second bottle of whatever came to hand or another fix, involving himself in one vaguely crooked scheme after another.
Like this present affair, for example. When hed first come to me with the offer Id turned it down flat thinking it must be drugs, had to be, and that was something I wouldnt have touched if Id been starving.
But I was wrong for he had got permission from his principals, whoever they were, to open the first package to prove to me that it consisted of dozens of neatly wrapped packets of good American dollar bills. So that was all right. I was just a middle-man, helping to move large sums of money illegally between countries, part of some complicated exchange process by which someone, somewhere, finally made a fortune.
I was still thinking about it all when I made my landfall. I called up the control tower at the airport which was something the authorities insisted I do, in spite of the fact that I didnt use their facilities. There was the usual interminable delay before I was given the all clear to land and turned in to make my final run.
The island looked fantastic in the light of the full moon, the rugged, hilly landscape of the interior like a black paper cut-out against the night sky and a white band of surf showed clearly at the base of the massive south coast cliffs.
I came in off the sea at three hundred feet, Port Roig to the left of me and beyond, between the two great natural granite breakwaters which enclosed the mouth of the creek, I saw the lights of Tijola. A green flare soared into the night giving me the all clear and as I passed between the two headlands, I put the Otter down into calm water and taxied towards the shore.
It wasnt much of a place. A couple of dozen small houses, a jetty, a few fishing boats, but it had everything I needed. Calm water to land in because of the enclosed nature of the creek, and lots of peace and quiet which suited me just fine.
There was a small bar on the beach. I could hear a guitar playing in spite of the Otters engine, and someone was singing. I dropped the wheels as I moved in towards the beach, and taxied up on to a broad concrete ramp which Id constructed myself earlier that year with the aid of a couple of locals.
The three men who waited beside the hearse looked exactly the same as the ones Id left in Cartagena. I switched off the engine, climbed down and they moved past me without a word and started to get the coffin out.
Heh, General, how did it go?
I turned round as Turk moved out of the darkness from the general direction of the beach bar. Fine. Just fine.
The three men shuffled past me with the coffin and I reached into the cabin for the package. I hefted it in my hands for a moment. Why dont we just run for the hills with one of these?
Dont even think of it. Turk took the package from me. No place to run. Not from these people. Theyd leave you with a penny for each eye, thats all.
So what is it? Mafia money?
Would that bother you?
Not particularly. When do we get paid?
Thursday. Ill be in touch. He got into the passenger seat of the hearse and leaned out of the window as the driver started the engine. You seeing Lillie tonight?
I expect so.
Youll find something for her on the table in your kitchen. Give her my love.
The hearse moved away into the night and I went across the beach to the small flat-roofed cottage I called home. There wasnt much to it. A bedroom, living room and kitchen, with a shower and toilet in the yard at the rear, but it sufficed, at least for the present.
Turk had left the light on in the kitchen. The something he had put on the table turned out to be a thousand American cigarettes, an item which often tends to be in short supply on the island, and a case of Bourbon. Lillie would be pleased. I stripped off quickly, went out to the yard and had a shower.
Lillie was Lillie St Claire. The Lillie St Claire, the Queen of the Metro lot for most of her career. Two Oscars and seventy-three movies in all, mostly entirely forgettable, maybe a dozen that had been really worth doing, two that ranked among the best ever.
Shed not made a picture in three or four years now as far as I knew, had dropped out completely and now lived in a kind of feudal splendour in a great white villa on the cliffs above Port Roig. Id flown her to Majorca one afternoon about six months previously, when shed missed the scheduled flight and was in a hurry to meet some film producer or other. The acquaintance had ripened into one of those quiet, steady, take-it-or-leave-it affairs which suited us both admirably.
But on a night like this, warm and soft and full of moonlight I looked forward to seeing her with some pleasure. I changed quickly into sweater and slacks, loaded the cigarettes and Bourbon into the rear of the old jeep I kept in the shed out back and drove away.
Lillies place was seven or eight miles away at the end of a promontory which could only be reached by one of those typically Ibizan dirt roads, twisting and turning between undulating hills, that were more like miniature mountains than anything else, and studded with pine trees.
The night air was heavy with their scent and beyond the cliffs, the sea flashed silver in the moonlight. It was all very spectacular with the Vedra two or three miles or so to my right, a great, solid hump of rock rearing more than a thousand feet out of the sea.
I paused on the brow of the road close to an old ruined mill, a well-known landmark, and got out to admire the view. I reached for a cigarette and somewhere close at hand, a woman screamed, high-pitched and full of terror.
A second later, a naked girl ran out of the darkness into the headlights of the jeep.
2 The Love Goddess
It was as if the camera had stopped turning, freezing the shot for a moment. Dark hair cut very close to the skull - unnaturally short - even the men were wearing it longer that year. Wide eyes above high cheekbones, filled with a kind of calm desperation rather than fear.
And the rest of her, as was to be expected, was calculated to take the breath away. Firm, round breasts, rather small but sharply pointed, the flat belly of a young girl, the hair dark between the thighs.
She came straight into my arms as if unable to stop that head-long flight, clutched at my sweater for a moment then pushed me away with a sudden, desperate cry. I grabbed hold of her by the wrists and held on tight.
Its all right, I said. Its all right, then repeated myself in Spanish for good measure.
She went very still, staring up at me, gasping for breath like the hunted animal she was, not saying a word, and a man ran out of the darkness.
Hippies, they will tell you, are Gods own chosen people. Flower folk. Gentle souls who only want to drop out of the hell that is modern industrial society. Maybe that was true once when they were content with marijuana, but things have changed since they got on to heroin and L.S.D., and most of the crowd whod washed up on the shores of Ibiza had drifted up from the bottom of a cess pool in my estimation.
The character who crouched a yard or two away, chest heaving as he fought for breath, was a vintage specimen. His black hair hung well below his shoulders and he wore a plaited leather headband, a scarlet shirt secured by a broad leather belt with a round brass buckle, six inches across, that glowed in the headlights like a small moon. The one incongruous feature were the wire spectacles, the eyes glinting behind them like some malevolent fox, on finding the farmer between him and the chicken.
I didnt need to hear his crazed laugh to know he was as high as a kite or the sight of his shaking hands. It was round about then that two more came crashing out of the pine trees, one of them losing his balance and arriving in an untidy heap in the middle of the road. He got to his feet as the other joined him and they ranged themselves behind Redshirt.
They really were quite something. Identical twins from the look of them and barefooted. Filthy, ragged creatures with tangled beards and long, matted hair, like something out of a childs nightmare about wild men from the woods coming to get you.
Redshirt spread his arms wide and said in a surprisingly soft voice, Plenty for everyone, man. You wait your turn is all.
I said to the girl, Get in the jeep. Youll find a reefer jacket in the back.
As I opened the door for her he came in fast and when he was close enough, I gave him a good, old-fashioned boot in the crutch. In other circumstances it might have killed or crippled him, but the fact that I was only wearing canvas rope-soled sandals took a little of the steam out of things.
In any event, the end result was perfectly satisfactory. He kept on going for a moment, carried forward by the momentum of his own rush, did a rather neat somersault and ended up in the ditch at the side of the road, curled into a very tight ball.
I shoved the girl into the jeep and scrambled in beside her as one of the Terrible Twins howled like a dog and rushed me. I gave him the door full in the face, rammed my foot down hard and took the jeep forward. I had a final impression of the other gibbering like some great ape in the headlights, then he bounced to one side like a rubber ball and we were away.
The girl leaned over the seat, as exciting and disturbing a sight as any man could wish for, and searched vainly in the shadows for the reefer coat. I gave it half-a-mile, just to be on the safe side, then pulled into the side of the road on a small bluff that overlooked the sea. I found the coat, gave it to her then got out of the jeep and walked to the edge of the cliffs. As I lit a cigarette the door slammed behind me. When I turned, the girl was watching me. Shed buttoned the reefer to the neck and turned up the sleeves, but it was still five sizes too large. The contrast between how she now looked and her former condition was incongruous enough to be almost funny.
She came forward, hands in pockets and I offered her a cigarette which she refused. Are you all right? I said.
Her answer was to collapse against me with a long, shuddering sigh. I got an arm around her quickly and held on tight.
After a while, she pulled away. Thank you. Im all right now. Her English was excellent, but with a pronounced French accent.
I said, Id choose my company a little more carefully another time if I were you.
She ignored that one and turned to look out to sea again. It is really very beautiful, this world of ours, dont you agree?
Which, considering what had gone before, was calculated to take the wind out of anyones sails. But she was right, of course. It was a night to thank God for.
I know, I said. Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.
She looked up at me, frowning slightly. Youre a strange man. You can be so gentle, yet back there
I know, angel, I said. Red in tooth and claw. I served my apprenticeship in a rough school. Of course, I could have passed by on the other side. Would you have preferred that?
Please forgive me. Im being very stupid. She held out her hand. My name is Claire Bouvier and Im really very grateful.
I held on to that hand for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, not for romantic reasons, but out of simple curiosity at discovering how work-roughened the palm was. She just didnt look the type.
Jack Nelson, I said. Was I in time back there?
She took another of those deep breaths. Yes, Mr Nelson. You were in time.
Thats all right then. Where are you staying?
A hotel in Ibiza on the Avenida Andenes close to the pier where the boat leaves for Formentera.
All right, I said. Ive got a friend who has a villa about a mile from here. Ill take you there first, get you some clothes, then Ill take you to your hotel. Or to the police - its up to you.
No - no police.
The reaction was sharp and definite.