by Max Grant
Then the idea came to me. I spotted a good-sized pane of broken glass under one of the structures. I wiggled on over and caught the pane firmly between the feet, adjusted my position, and started rolling for the pier. Rolling out onto the rotting deck I was careful to stay clear of the edges and the end. I was in no hurry to learn a new way to swim, and I figured if I was lucky enough to float it would be face down.
The better part of the pane of glass was still clamped between my feet when I bumped up onto a cleat near the end of the dock. I’d seen a number of smaller craft scurrying in and out of the bay, some accompanying the freighters and tankers.
After trying with little success to aim the glass away from the dock and use it as a signal mirror, without losing it in the process, I was looking for a better way to control it. Finally, I let go of the glass on the deck in a spot where it was half-way propped on old piece of rope. I got myself turned around and got a hold of the glass in my teeth.
Four times over the next hour I was able to flash an SOS in the direction of a ship passing not too far from the horizon. My jaw finally gave it up, and the glass slipped out of my mouth. I abruptly laid back to catch it on my chest, but it rolled off and lay flat on the deck. Unable to retrieve it, I rolled over on my side and opted for some late morning shut-eye.
When I next opened my eyes a small watercraft with US Coast Guard markings was pulling up to the pier. The boat was tied up to the cleat and two armed men debarked.
“Good to see you, boys.” I grinned up at them.
The older one looked down, nudged the glass away from my body with a toe and gave a knowing smile.
“Not bad. What’s your story?”
“I’m hungry,” I croaked, “and I have no idea where I am or how I got here.”
He reached down and pulled out my wallet, flipped it open.
“A gumshoe,” he snorted. “A long way from home.”
I had to agree with that. “That’s right. I was working a case that took me to the home of a prominent party on St. Pete Beach. I guess I wasn’t welcome.”
“You working with any law down here?”
“Not yet, but that’ll be my next stop. What is this place?”
“This here is Mullet Key, an island in the mouth of Tampa Bay. We’re at the old Army coastal defense site. Ft. DeSoto’s down there at the bottom. Used to be an old bombing and gunnery range back in ’42, but it was excessed just last year and is kind of in limbo right now; may end up reverting back to Pinellas County.”
The big one sat me up and the little guy cut my ropes with what looked like a Boy Scout folder. Then he walked over and rummaged around in the boat for a while. He came back with a pair of bolt cutters and with some effort chopped loose the cuffs.
I spent most of the rest of the day on harbor patrol, grilling in the front of the scow while the boys prowled the nooks and crannies of the outer bay. It was getting toward sundown when they beached me at the Coast Guard station in the Port of St. Petersburg.
John Law was waiting for me there and I rode downtown with a couple of poker-faced bulls.
The Chief was another tall and grizzled old boy. He wasn’t particularly generous with his words. My wallet was spread out in front of him and I waited while he finished rifling through it.
Finally he sat back and gave me the stare for a good minute.
“Who’s pot did you piss in, son?”
I looked him in the eye and said, “An old party over on St. Pete Beach. Involved in espionage for the Soviets, near as I can tell. I believe he’s CPUSA.”
“You got any proof for that?”
“Not directly. I was in the process of trying to find some when I ended up out on that island.”
Refreshed in my memory, I gave him the crib-note version of the story.
When I came up for air he tilted his head back, narrowed his eyes and asked, “What service?”
“The Corps, sir.”
“Me too. Belleau Woods. Semper Fi. My name’s Walters.”
“Raymond James, private.”
“Well, I’ve got a news flash for you bright boy. We’re quite aware of your old party, Thornton Cain. He and that grafter Wiedemeyer are acquaintances, associates quite possibly. You might say that they’re fellow travelers.”
I felt about as sharp as a bowling ball.
“Sumbitches are everywhere,” was the best I could come up with.
“Not exactly. But they’re out there and they’re enough of ‘em to keep a lot of us busy.”
“Now there’s someone here wants to see you.”
He pressed a buzzer on the side of his desk and sat back, crossing his arms, with a satisfied smirk on his pan.
I was trying to shake off my confusion as to whom else may have known I was even found when the private door to the office popped open framing Yuki in all her petite loveliness. I jumped to my feet as she streaked across the floor and leaped into my arms. I held her close for what seemed several minutes, feeling the silent tears coursing down my neck. Finally, she drew back and attempted a smile, then resumed the stranglehold on my waist.
After some clumsy sparring and dodging, I managed to wrestle her into my lap in the chair. I gave her my hanky and she snuffled into it, mumbling words in a low breath that I couldn’t understand. I patted her back and said, “Well, Chief, this is a wonderful surprise, but how…?”
He held his hand up and interrupted, “Miss Suzuki has been here working with us for about a week now, and we called her back in this morning right after the Coast Guard called in. You see, we’ve been looking for you since the day your rental was recovered over on the beach. It had been tagged for a few days, then reported abandoned to Sunrise, which promptly filed a complaint against you with our jurisdiction, since that’s where the car was recovered.
“Your Indian friend had dropped into the Tampa PD last week after he failed to locate you, and he filed a missing persons that we picked up on the wire. He had your secretary’s phone number, so we enquired with her as to the nature of your business out here. She told us to check with the FBI, but she’d made this office the next morning before we got ‘round to doing it.”
Yuki piped up, “When they told me you were missing, I locked up shop and hopped a cab to the International airport and caught the Transglobal overnighter to Miami, then the Seminole Line’s morning flight to Tampa.”
“Anyway, Ms. Cruz gave us the details concerning that fellow you were interested in at the Ybor City meet, and it wasn’t difficult for us to ID him through the Tampa PD as Thornton Cain. They’ve been keeping an eye on that bunch independent of the feds, working with the local Military Police to keep them away from McDill and the other area military installations.
“They gave us his location, and we caught up with you through the owner of the Gulf Breeze. That led us to the County Assessor’s here in town where a certain well-put-together redhead seemed to recall you rather well.”
Yuki pouted at that and dug her heels into the floor, averting her eyes in the direction of the window.
The Chief continued, “I already knew about Wiedemeyer’s doubtful loyalties, and kind of guessed at that point you might have got cross-wise with the old boy Cain. So we mounted a raid on his place and tossed it real good. But nothing came of it until you turned up today. We still don’t have much to pin on him except your word.”
“And I bet he’s had plenty of opportunity to sanitize that house since the raid.”
“No doubt. Unfortunately we had no grounds to hold any of them, and the entry and search was kind of shaky as it was.
“The Feds wanted no part of it, but agreed to follow up on any fallout from the raid. There turned out to be quite a bit of that. We didn’t want to tip our hand regarding possible knowledge of your disappearance, so we made up some bull puckey about a simultaneous nationwide raid on known CPUSA safe houses.
“That got a rise out of Cain, and the FBI has been monitoring their movements and communications ever since. I have no id
ea what they’ve come up with, but I’ve no doubt it’s been plenty.
“From what Yuki’s told us, you’ve single handedly opened up a Soviet spy ring stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Feds here’ve been looking a long time for a direct link between Soviet espionage and the local CPUSA membership. This bird Cain is it.”
* * *
Well, that was fine news and all but there was still some unfinished personal business to attend to. According to Veronica, the boys were holding one of their usual meetings in two night’s time.
The next day I spent some time on the phone with Mack and let him know I’d be in touch when we were ready to return to Dallas. He assured me that the rocket motor parts had been secured by the government and new security measures for defense contractor operations were being implemented and sternly enforced. No mention had been made of what actually had been shipped off in those crates.
I picked up an agency car downtown and Yuki and I spent some time shopping and sightseeing. Veronica invited us to dinner in the evening.
“We hadn’t suspected Cain of involvement with espionage,” Veronica explained.
“We knew his crew was trying to organize something called the ‘Association of Employees of Americans’ here in the cigar factories. Apparently they weren’t aware that most of these Cubanos are Americans, have been here for generations, and own the businesses and employ the workers.
“It took no effort at all to keep the foreign organizers out, and the few locals they recruited were blackballed and forced to leave town. They really can be quite stupid, those Russians.
“Unfortunately, and as you well know, the threat lies in their influence over other stupid people. It’s not just these foolish ladies in the garment worker’s unions. You can see evidence of the same down at the harbor where too many of the so-called men have way more muscle than brains. I just can’t look at any of these Russian boot-lickers as men. It’s depressing to see them marching in formation and chanting their slogans like a bunch of mindless Red ants.”
* * *
On the afternoon of the meet we rode out to the beach, caught an early supper at the Penguin Diner, and set up a stake a few doors down from the house on Passe-a-Grille Way. Sure enough the sun was just setting on the water when the big Caddy slid out of the driveway and up the pike. When they were out of sight I made a U-turn and rolled on down to park against the sea wall just up from the Pelican’s Roost. We gave it another hour until the darkness settled in.
Yuki produced a rod, one of the Colt Police Positives she’d carried from Los Angeles, and I fished the electric torch from the dash.
Shoving the Colt in my jacket pocket I asked her, “Are you packing anything?”
“My Vest Pocket; the .32 S&W. It’s good enough for close-in work.”
“How’s the State of Florida feel about that iron?”
“Who cares?”
We took a stroll up the bay side of the street and wandered on by the house. The place was entirely dark, but I had a feeling the Filipino was lurking around somewhere. We crossed the street and legged on back, taking the direct approach up the driveway to the stairs behind the garage. Yuki secreted herself beneath the base of the stairs while I crept up to the landing.
The door didn’t have much of a lock on it. I got out my flexible steel tool and worked it until the latch sprung. The door inched open and I peered into total darkness. Recalling the bedroom was on the far side, I tiptoed on over. A quick flash of the torch showed the layout. The mutt didn’t have a desk or a shelf of books.
Choosing the bed stand, I retrieved the folded map and two business cards from my breast pocket and slid them in under everything to the back of the drawer. And to seal the deal I took an old Bible from my jacket pocket and slipped it under the mattress. I figured if the big guy had any suspicions about the set-up, this little touch should remove all doubt. I eased the door shut behind me and ensured it was locked. At the base of the stairs I peeked around, but Yuki wasn’t around.
“Ray. I’m here,” came a whisper from the darkness.
She walked over from the yard and I pulled her in under the stairs. “Did you see anything?”
“Not a peep. But I didn’t get close to the house. I just walked the length of the yard to see if there was any way in from the back. I don’t think so. There’re a lot of windows on the far side of the house if you want to take a look.”
“Not on this mission,” I told her. “We better git while we can.”
We scurried around the building and walked on out of the driveway like we owned the place, turned south, and continued on down the sidewalk toward the Roost.
As we walked Yuki asked, “So, Ray, what did we just do back there?”
“You remember that navigation map of lower Tampa Bay I picked up at the shop today?
“Yeah.”
“Well I circled that Key they had me on, based on what the Coast Guard boys told me, and put an X at the dock where they found me. Tore the top half off and threw it away, folded it up nice and tight - pocket-sized - and stuck it in the drawer along with a couple of cards from one of the boys in Veronica’s shop.”
“And that old Bible?”
“I slipped that well-worn Bible under the mattress. What I’m hoping is if we can get Cain suspicious of the driver he’ll toss the joint, find that stuff, and figure the boy’s been talking with the FBI. I was hoping that Bible might seal the deal.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, just finding it there would reinforce in Cain’s mind that the driver’s ideologically unreliable. It’ll provide a motive for betrayal. My goal is to get those two at each other’s throats.”
We entered the Roost. Apart from an old party holding up the bar, there wasn’t a cat in the place. I settled Yuki into a quiet table at the dark end of the room and walked over to the bar. The barkeep gave me a long look and wandered over.
“Haven’t seen you for the last little while. You’re back, huh?”
“That’s right. I liked it so much down here last month I though I’d bring the little woman for a visit.”
He cast an eye in her direction and didn’t look impressed.
“What’ll it be?”
“Bourbon on the rocks, Coon Hollow if you got it, and your best scotch for the lady.”
The drinks arrived with a large plate of peel and eat shrimp. Yuki looked delighted.
The barkeep said, “Happy hour was kind of slow this evening.”
He winked and turned with a big grin, apparently entertaining his own private thoughts.
“So Ray, what’s next?”
“I’m going to have to give this some careful thought. Hey, I already got another idea.”
* * *
Next morning I got on the horn to Chief Walters early.
“Chief, I could use your help with one loose end I’m trying to work on. Can you go back in and grab that Filipino houseboy. Let him know that the driver put the finger on him as an illegal alien or something, but don’t keep him over night. Hold him for a while, but make like there’s some big screw-up and you got no choice but to release him. I’d like him to take that word back to Cain.”
“I like that idea. There’s no point to get the FBI involved in this. I’ll have the houseboy picked up before noon, only I’m going to hold him here and see if I can’t get Cain and company to come clear him and take him home. We can toss the place while they’re gone. Come on in here about eleven.”
Yuki and I were cooling our heels in Walters’ office when the word came down just before noon. Emilio had been arrested and placed in a holding cell upstairs.
Walters placed a call to the telephone company and obtained the number of the big house in Passe-a-Grille. He wrote in on the blotter and shoved the telephone instrument across the desk to me.
Cain picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, this is Wiedemeyer. Word is the cops have rousted your houseboy. They got him downtown and they’re sweating him. You su
re that party boy of yours isn’t ratting you all out?”
“Better get to the bottom of this. Oh-oh! Gotta run.” I broke the connection.
The Chief laughed. “That ought to start something. I’ll call Cain after lunch and suggest he get down here to retrieve his boy. You get over there now and make sure as to who leaves the house. If they both leave my boys will keep ‘em busy all afternoon.”
“Good, but if it works out that way do me a favor and keep them here until evening. I’d like to do some close surveillance when they get back to the house.”
* * *
We grabbed a couple of burgers in South Pasadena and were parked back south of the big house before the end of the lunch hour. Presently I asked Yuki to walk north along the seawall past the house; keeping an eye out for the occupants of the big Caddy should it leave.
Ten minutes later it shot out the driveway and barreled up the street. Yuki emerged from a thicket and walked on down to the car.
“There were two of them, and the greasy guy was driving. I didn’t see the passenger too well, but he was tall.”
That was enough for me. We barreled out of the car and walked up to the drive. I picked the lock on the door at the rear of the house and we went to work on the library.
The files were secreted in a locked compartment of the credenza behind the desk. I also opened up all the drawers in the desk.
The Chief and his cameraman arrived in short order and began photographing any records that appeared useful.
“What about the safe?” I asked.
“We’ll get that later. Maybe save it for the FBI. What I’m looking at here will be enough to hold them and ensure an indictment.”
We covered our tracks and sealed up the house by mid-afternoon. Yuki and I grabbed some conch fritters from a stand off Gulf Boulevard and sat on the beach until sunset.
* * *
Back to our parking spot across from the Roost, the last dark purples in the west sky were fading to darkness when the Caddy heaved into the drive. After Frankie had stowed the Jew canoe and locked the garage we walked up the sidewalk past the front of the house. A tall hedge kept the north side of the house in deep shadow. We snuck up through some bushes on the corner of the structure and secreted ourselves beneath the large bay window looking into the parlor. A large divan and two armchairs were arrayed along the east wall, to our left, facing a fireplace.
