Big Kiss-Off Read Online Free

her.
    “Venezuelan,” she corrected.
    To keep from making a fool of himself and possibly getting his face slapped, Cade took the bottle of rum from the locker and handed it to the girl. “Here. Take a drink of this. Then maybe you can stop shivering long enough to make sense.”
    The girl drank without pleasure and returned the bottle.
“Gracias.”
    Cade sat on the littered bunk, holding the bottle in his hand. “All right. Let’s have it. You swam ashore and picked my boat to warm up in and grab some food and maybe a few clothes, because you thought I was in the cantina. Now you go on from there. Why didn’t you come ashore in one of the ship’s boats or in the pilot tender?”
    The girl spoke distinctly, choosing her words with care. “Because they do not know I am on the ship. Because I am — ” she stopped, puzzled. “How you say when you not pay the passage?”
    “A stowaway?”
    “Sí.”
    “You stowed away, where? In what port?”
    “The port of La Guaira. I am from Caracas.”
    Cade was incredulous. “And none of the crew spotted you between there and here?”
    The girl shook her head. “No.” She had the charm of making everything she said sound dramatic. “For six days I am in a lifeboat, over-covered with canvas. I bribe a steward for food.” She looked at the open can of beans. “Is not nice to be ’ungry. I am ’ungry now.”
    “I’ll string along with that,” Cade said. He took himself a drink of rum. “Okay. We’re up to Caracas. Why did you stow away?”
    The girl moved his clean clothes aside and sat on the bunk opposite him. “Because I do not have the money or the passport and I want to come to the States. I
have
to come to the United States. And when I get here, I know they will not let me in. So when the boat stopped out in the river, I slide down a rope in the dark and swim to the shore.” She added earnestly, “It was a long way an’ I was ver’ afraid.”
    Cade brought himself another drink. He wished the girl would button the top button of his tunic or stop leaning forward when she talked. Wet and muddy and frightened as she was, she was one of the most attractive girls he had ever seen. That included Janice. Just looking at her excited him. He put the cork back in the rum bottle. “What’s your name?”
    “Mimi,” she said, gravely, “Mimi Trujillo Esterpar Moran.”
    It was snug in the cabin with the door closed. The rum lay warm in Cade’s empty stomach. He was pleased by his own sagacity. “That Moran sounds like it might be Irish.”
    Mimi smiled. “It is.”
    Cade got up and opened the cabin door. The fog was heavy now and blotted out the levee. The juke box in Sal’s was still playing
Jambalaya
. As far as he could tell, there was no one watching on the pier. It could be he’d gotten his wind up over nothing. Warning him off the river and making sure he left were two entirely different things. Not even Joe Laval or Tocko could explain cut mooring lines or a dead man. Especially when the dead man was a local boy and former Army officer.
    Behind him, Mimi’s voice sounded worried. “Someone saw me swim ashore? Someone is looking for me?”
    “No,” Cade said.
    He closed the door and leaned against it, staring at the girl on his bunk. She didn’t look like any waterfront tramp he’d ever met. She looked like a nice kid from a good family. More, she had guts to do what she’d done. So he hadn’t been with a woman in two years. He was damned if he’d force himself on her just because she had fallen into his lap. If anything should eventuate it would have to start with her, after he’d heard the rest of her story.
    “I am so ’ungry,” Mimi said.
    Cade pumped up the pressure stove in the galley and lighted all three burners. He examined the meager ship’s stores he’d purchased before putting out of Corpus Christi and decided on cream of mushroom soup, canned corned-beef hash and coffee. He put the cans on the small work table and found Mimi