Island of the Sequined Love Nun

but she wasn't working as a nurse when I met her."
    "Oh, good," Tuck said.
    Curtis seemed to be waiting for Tucker to ask. Tucker was waiting for the guard to rat him out for sneaking out of the compound last night.
    "She was a dancer in North Beach. An exotic dancer."
    "No shit," Tuck said.
    "Are you shocked?" Curtis obviously wanted him to be shocked.
    "No."
    "She was incredible. The most incredible woman I had ever seen. She still is."
    "But then, you've been a missionary on a remote island for twenty-eight years," Tuck said.
    Curtis picked his club for the next shot: the seven iron. "What's this?"
    "Looks like blood and feathers," Tuck said.
    Curtis handed the club to Mato for him to clean it. "Beth did a dance with surgical tubing and a stethoscope that took my breath away."
    "Pretty common," Tuck said. "Choke you with the surgical tubing and use the stethoscope to make sure you haven't done the twitching fish."
    "Really?" Curtis said. "You've seen a woman do that?"
    Tuck put on his earnest young man face. "Seen? You didn't notice the ligature marks on my neck when you examined me?"
    "Oh, I see," Curtis said. "Still, I, at least, had never seen anything like it. She…" Curtis couldn't seem to return to his story. "The wet suit this morning. Was that a sexual thing? I mean, most people would find it uncomfortable."
    "No, I'm just trying to lose a little weight."
    Curtis looked serious now. "I don't know if that's such a good idea. You're still very thin from your ordeal in getting here."
    "I'd like to get down to about eight pounds," Tuck said. "There's a big Gandhi revival thing going on back in the States. Guys who look like they're starving have to beat the babes off with a stick. Started with female fashion models, but now it's moved to the men."
    Curtis look embarrassed. "I guess I'm a bit out of touch. Beth tries to keep up with what's going on in the States, but it, well, seems irrelevant out here. I guess I'll be glad when this is all over and we can leave the island."
    "Then why don't you just leave? You're a physician. You could open up a practice in the States and pull down a fortune without all this."
    Curtis glanced at the guard, then looked back to Tuck. "A fortune maybe, but not a fortune like we're accumulating now. I'm too old to start over at the bottom."
    "You've got twenty-eight years' experience. You said yourself that the people you take care of are the healthiest in the Pacific. You wouldn't be starting over."
    "Yes, I would. Mr. Case-Tuck-I'm a doctor, but I'm not a very good one."
    Tuck had met a number of doctors in his life, but he had never met one who could bear to admit that he was incompetent at anything. It was a running joke among flight instructors that doctors made the worst students. "They think they're gods. It's our job to teach them that they're mortal. Only pilots are gods."
    This guy seemed so pathetic that Tuck had to remind himself that the good doctor was at least a double murderer. He watched Curtis hit a nice hundred-yard bloodstained seven iron to within ten feet of the pin, which was set up on a small patch of grass near the beach.
    Tuck chased down his own skidding thwack of a nine iron that had landed between the roots of a walking tree, an arboreal oddity that sat atop a three-foot teepee of tangled roots and gave the impression that it might move off on its own power at any moment. Tuck was hoping that it would.
    The caddie followed Tuck, and when they were out of earshot of the doctor, he turned to face the stoic Japanese.
    "You can't tell him, can you?"
    The guard pretended not to understand, but Tuck saw that he was getting it, even if only by inflection. "You can't tell him and you can't fucking shoot me, can you? You killed the last pilot and that got you in a world of trouble, didn't it? That's why you guys follow me like a bunch of baby ducks isn't it?" Tuck was guessing, but it was the only logical explanation.
    Mato glanced toward the doctor.
    "No," Tuck said. "He doesn't know that I know. And we're not going to tell him, are we? Just shake your head if you're getting this."
    The guard shook his head.
    "Okay, then, here's the deal. I'll let you guys look like you're doing your job, but when I wave you off, you're gone. You hear me? I want you guys off my ass. You tell your buddies, okay?"
    The guard nodded.
    "Can you speak any English at all?"
    "Hai. A rittle."
    "You guys killed the pilot, didn't you?"
    "He tly to take prane." Mato looked as if the