Dolls Are Deadly Read Online Free Page A

along the deck, went down three steps and entered the cabin, where he walked over and lifted the hatch on the engine housing. The new engine looked powerful. As Sylvester had said, it had been dirtied and smeared with oil. It took close inspection to tell that it was new. The redhead looked down at it for a long time, his gray eyes thoughtful.
    At a chorus of shouting outside, he closed the hatch, turned away from the engine and went up on deck. They were all on the port side, craning to look ahead at another boat coming into view. Sylvester held a pair of binoculars on her.
    “She’s a Cuban!” he yelled.
    Vince, still at the wheel, headed toward the approaching boat. At the change in direction, Sylvester came alive, set down the binoculars and picked up his drink in an unsteady hand, liquor slopping over the sides.
    “Not that way,” he shouted. “Fish no good that way. I take you to better place.”
    “Let him alone, Silvy,” Ed said. “Vince is a frustrated mariner at heart. Just wants to take us for a ride. And who knows, might be some señoritas on the boat if she’s Cuban.” He laughed boisterously. “I’d rather fish for señoritas than fish for fish.”
    “What is that—fustrated?” Sylvester asked.
    “Frustrated. Means wants to do something, but don’t get a chance.”
    “Ho!” The little Cuban laughed loudly, pounding one thick, hairy hand on his leg. “I know wha tha’s like. When I walk on Collins Avenue and see the girls. All the girls I can’t have… Lettim alone then.”
    Vince brought the Santa Clara in close, deftly heeling to port beside a thirty-foot power boat named La Ballena.
    “The Whale!” Sylvester yelled. “Cuban whale!”
    The ocean top in the Stream was flat as a table.
    From La Ballena came wild Cuban music. On deck, a girl clad in short red shorts and the suggestion of a red bra was rhumbaing, her inky hair flying, her teeth, eyes and earrings flashing. A young, dark man sat on the rail watching her and shouting encouragement in Spanish. As the music increased in tempo, her movements grew more abandoned. Then, abruptly, the record player stopped. Inertia kept her moving for a moment in the new silence, then she too stopped, looking up startled at the nearness of the Santa Clara.
    Two older men who had fish lines out, looked around.
    “You folks fishin’ or funnin’?” Ed shouted.
    “A little of both,” the taller man said.
    “Is there any difference?” his companion asked.
    Although the men did not look alike, they both had full, loosely-put-together faces and their eyes, despite the bantering words, held a certain flint. They wore light, broad-brimmed Panama straws and spoke with a slight accent.
    “Why don’t you join us, señores?”
    The girl leaned on the rail smiling, her coal-black eyes with dilated pupils resting with frank feminine appraisal on Shayne. “Si, why don’t you?” Her low, throbbing voice had a strong Spanish accent.
    “I don’t rhumba,” Shayne said.
    “You don’t have to.” Her dewy eyes framed in black lashes almost reached across to him. Her breasts swelled above the red bra. Unexpectedly, she pursed her full lips into kiss-shape and leaned toward Shayne. After a moment she withdrew, humming almost silently, and moved in a slow nautch-like dance, her hips swaying provocatively, the muscles in her diaphragm moving sinuously in the bare space between the skimpy bra and the short shorts.
    “I’d sure like to come aboard,” Ed said regretfully, “but I promised the old lady I’d be home tonight—with fish. And I haven’t done any fishing, except in Demerara.”
    “What kind of fish, pop?” the dark young man asked brashly. “Maybe in Cuban waters we catch some different kinds which she never taste.”
    “Don’t matter which kind,” Ed said.
    “All right. You want fresh bonito? Very good baked in oven with onions and peppers around him.” The young man had the same black, untamed eyes and heavy accent as the