The Last Place God Made

I rolled over on my back, was aware of her on her knees beside me, hands busy in my pockets. Some basic instinct of self-preservation tried to bring me back to life when I saw the wallet in her hands, a knowledge that it contained everything of importance to me, not only material things, but my present future.

As she stood up, I reached for her ankle and got the heel of her shoe squarely in the centre of my palm. She kicked out again, sending me rolling towards the edge of the pier.

I was saved from going over by some sort of raised edging, and hung there, scrabbling for a hold frantically, no strength in me at all. She started towards me presumably to finish it off and then several things seemed to happen at once.

I heard my name, clear through the rain, saw three men halfway across the catwalk, Hannah in the lead. He had that .45 automatic in his hand and a shot echoed flatly through the rain.

Too late, for Maria of the Angels was already long gone into the darkness.

3

The Immelmann Turn

The stern-wheeler left on time the following morning, but without me. At high noon when she must have been thirty or forty miles down-river, I was sitting outside the comandante’s office again for the second time in two days, listening to the voices droning away inside.

After a while, the outside door opened and Hannah came in. He was wearing flying clothes and looked tired, his face unshaven, the eyes hollow from lack of sleep. He’d had a contract run to make at ten o’clock, only a short hop of fifty miles or so down-river for one of the mining companies, but something that couldn’t be avoided.

He sat on the edge of the sergeant’s desk and lit a cigarette, regarding me anxiously. ‘How do you feel?’

‘About two hundred years old.’

‘God damn that bitch.’ He got to his feet and paced restlessly back and forth across the room. ‘If there was only something I could do.’ He turned to face me, really looking his age for the first time since I’d known him. ‘I might as well level with you, kid. Every damn thing I buy round here from fuel to booze is on credit. The Bristol ate up all the ready cash I had. When my government contract is up in another three months, I’m due a reasonable enough bonus, but until then…’

‘Look, forget about it,’ I said.

‘I took you to the bloody place, didn’t I?’

He genuinely felt responsible, I could see that and couldn’t do much about it, a hard thing for a man like him to accept, for his position in other people’s eyes, their opinion was important to him.

‘I’m free, white and twenty-one, isn’t that what you say in the States?’ I said. ‘Anything I got, I asked for, so have a decent cigarette for a change and shut up.’

I held out the tin of Balkan Sobranie and the door to the comandante’s office opened and the sergeant appeared.

‘You will come in now, Senhor Malllory?’

I stood up and walked into the room rather slowly which was understandable under the circumstances. Hannah simply followed me inside without asking anyone’s permission.

The comandante nodded to him. ‘Senhor Hannah.’

‘Maybe there’s something I can do,’ Hannah said.

The comandante managed to look as sorrowful as only a Latin can and shook his head. ‘A bad business, Senhor Mallory. You say there was a thousand cruzeiros in the wallet besides your passport?’

I sank into the nearest chair. ‘Nearer to eleven hundred.’

‘You could have had her for the night for five, senhor. To carry that kind of money on your person was extremely foolish.’

‘No sign of her at all, then?’ Hannah put in. ‘Surely to God somebody must know the bitch.’

‘You know the type, senhor. Working the river, moving from town to town. No one at The Little Boat had ever seen her before. She rented a room at a house near the waterfront, but had only been there three days.’

‘What you’re trying to say is that she’s well away from Manaus by now and the chances of catching her are remote,’ I said.

‘Exactly, senhor. The truth is always painful. She was three-quarters Indian. She will probably go back to her people for a while. All she has to do is take off her dress. They all look the same.’ He helped himself to a long black cigar from a box on his desk. ‘None of which helps you. I am sensible of this. Have you funds that you can draw on?’

‘Not a penny.’

‘So?’ He frowned. ‘The passport is not so difficult. An application to the British Consul in Belem backed by a letter from me should remedy that situation within a week or two, but as the law stands at present, all foreign nationals are required to produce evidence of employment if they do not possess private means.’

I knew exactly what he meant. There were public work gangs for people like me.

Hannah moved round to the other end of the room where he could look at me and nodded briefly. He said calmly, ‘No difficulty there. Senhor Mallory was considering coming to work for me anyway.’

‘As a pilot?’ The comandante’s eyes went up and he turned to me. ‘This is so, senhor?’

‘Quite true,’ I said.

Hannah grinned slightly and the comandante looked distinctly relieved ‘All is in order then.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘If anything of interest does materialise in connection with this unfortunate affair, senhor, I’ll know where to find you.’

I shook hands – it would have seemed churlish not to – and shuffled outside. I kept right on going and had reached the pillared entrance hall before Hannah caught up with me. I sat down on a marble bench in a patch of sunlight and he stood in front of me looking genuinely uncertain.

‘Did I do right, back there?’

I nodded wearily. ‘I’m obliged to you – really, but what about this Portuguese you were expecting?’

‘He loses, that’s all.’ He sat down beside me. ‘Look, I know you wanted to get home, but it could be worse. You can move in with Mannie at Landro and a room at the Palace on me between trips. Your keep and a hundred dollars American a week.’

The terms were generous by any standards. I said, ‘That’s fine by me.’

‘There’s just one snag. Like I said, I’m living on credit at the moment. That means I won’t have the cash to pay you till I get that government bonus at the end of my contract which means sticking out this last three months with me. Can you face that?’

‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’

I got up and walked out into the entrance. He said, with what sounded like genuine admiration in his voice, ‘By God but you’re a cool one, Mallory. Doesn’t anything ever throw you?’

‘Last night was last night,’ I told him. ‘Today’s something else again. Do we fly up to Landro this afternoon?’

He stared at me, a slight frown on his face, seemed about to make some sort of comment, then obviously changed his mind.

‘We ought to,’ he said. ‘There’s the fortnightly run to the mission station at Santa Helena, to make tomorrow. There’s only one thing. The Bristol ought to go, too. I want Mannie to check that engine out as soon as possible. That means both of us will have to fly. Do you feel up to it?’

‘That’s what I’m getting paid for,’ I said and shuffled down the steps towards the cab waiting at the bottom.

The airstrip Hannah was using at Manaus at that time wasn’t much. A wooden administration hut with a small tower and a row of decrepit hangar sheds backed on to the river, roofed with rusting corrugated iron. It was a derelict sort of place and the Hayley, the only aircraft on view, looked strangely out of place, its scarlet and silver trim gleaming in the afternoon sun.

It was siesta so there was no one around. I dropped my canvas grip on the ground beside the Hayley. It was so hot that I took off my flying jacket – and very still except for an occasional roar from a bull-throated howler monkey in the trees at the river’s edge.

There was a sudden rumble behind and when I turned, Hannah was pushing back the sliding door on one of the sheds.