by John Roeburt
He said, “I have a car outside. Can I drop you anywhere?”
“No thanks.” I opened the door.
He said softly, “Please do not forget me, Monsieur Mouse. As for Rose, at least tell her to come and talk to me. What sort of a person is this Mary, who I am sure is Rose?”
Walking down the stairs I called back, “She’s just a girl who doesn’t want to be a pain in the neck to anybody.”
CHAPTER IX
There was a black Caddy waiting outside with a conservatively-dressed but hard-looking joker behind the wheel. The license plate said something about diplomatic corps. The driver gave me a casual glance. A bodyguard looks the same the world over. For a fast moment I wondered if it would be an idea to let him drive me to downtown Manhattan. At least I’d get there without being hurt, maybe.
I walked along the dimly lighted streets for a few blocks, then cut over to the avenue. No one seemed to be following me. To confuse somebody, perhaps myself, I rode a bus past the subway station, then got off and stood in the doorway of a locked store for several minutes, watching the street. There were very few people or cars out. When a police radio car cruised by, I decided it might be best if I left the neighborhood; all I’d need now would be to run into the super I’d slugged.
The subway platform was empty. I rode in the first car and went through the routine of looking-jumping-out-the-door at every other stop. Now that I knew the score, if I could believe Jock, I wasn’t worried. All I wanted was to reach the Sea Princess—alone. I stopped jumping out of the first door of the subway when a voice at my back asked, “You sick, buddy?”
I spun around to see the motorman leaning out of his window and grinning at me. Maybe it was all my imagination but he looked a lot like the basketball player who’d thrown a gun in my side and walked me to the demolished buildings. At the next stop I got off and waited for another train. I left this at 34th Street for a “tube” running under the Hudson River to Newark, according to a sign. The damp and dreary station gave me a weird feeling as if I was in a vast tomb where anything could happen, like me being shot. I was the only person on the platform so I left there fast and crossed the street to the big railway station, where I was told most trains stopped at Newark as they headed West.
It was a good deal: with all the trains it would be hard to tell where I was going. Also there were upper and lower levels, making it easier to duck anybody. A redcap said I could pay for my ticket on the train due to pull out in eight minutes. I walked to the lower level where I found a kind of deserted tile alcove not far from stairs running down to the train track. In about five minutes I’d be on my way.
Leaning against the wall, I kept glancing around carefully, certain I must look like a guy making the late shift. A man passed carrying a big bundle of morning papers on his shoulders…tossed the bundle at me. About a hundred pounds hit my chest and by the time I recovered my balance I was looking into the grim, lardy-face of the clown who ran when I drop-kicked his partner. He held a thin billy in his right hand, “Don’t make me lump you, wise guy,” he said. “No rough and tumble act.”
I figured his partner had to be scouting another part of the station for me, and would be along any minute. “Don’t you jerks get tired of all this stuff?”
“Don’t act up,” he said, waving the blackjack.
“I don’t want you combing my hair with that.” I heard steps coming toward us. I glanced in their direction but didn’t see anybody. “Beside, I haven’t a chance. Here comes your partner.”
My left and his eyes moved at the same time. I felt the numbness spread along my knuckles as I hooked his big jaw. He sat down hard, fell backwards in slow motion. Yanking the billy out of his hand, I saw a pair of blue pants walking faster toward us. Bending down, as if feeling the dick’s head, my other hand raced through his pockets until I found the little leather holder with his badge. The cop was coming on the run now.
I stood up, pushing the billy into the sleeve of Hal’s auto coat. “Sure glad to see you, officer. Private investigator.” I flashed the badge, gave it to him. “Working for Transworld-wide Oil. You’ve heard of ’em, biggest oil outfit in the world.”
“Transworld-wide Oil? Yeah,” he said, handing the badge back. “Trouble with this guy?” The cop pointed at the dick with his toe.
“Not exactly. I been tailing him for weeks. Head of the Washington office wants to have a talk with him. Big-deal stuff about oil maps. I don’t know what it’s all about except he’s a little nuts and… Look, unofficially, can you keep an eye on him for a moment while I phone the front office for instructions? The company will appreciate it.”
“Okay. Is he hurt?”
“Naw, I had to clout him to make him stand still. I’ll be right back. If he starts raving, tell him to shut up.” I ran out of the alcove and up to another level, then down a stairway, and hopped the train a few seconds before it pulled out. I felt very pleased. Transworld-wide was a name I’d made up and I fully realized what Jock had meant by the “unofficial” law. I paid for a ticket and stepped off at Newark minutes later. At the bus terminal I had a half hour wait for the last bus to Red Bank. I found the address of the detective agency in the phone book and wrote it down on the back of Jock’s card, then spent the rest of the time hiding in the men’s room. Boarding the bus I was reasonably certain I wasn’t being followed.
It was after midnight when I stepped off at Red Bank. I still had over ten dollars and I took a taxi to the first open bar I saw in Long Branch, had a beer, and started walking the remaining four or five miles to Asbury. Except for passing cars I didn’t see a soul. It was a clear night with enough wind, and the smell of salt and the sight of the ocean made me feel fine. Yet, all the time I had a feeling it was too easy, that “they” were playing with me. This was the most important part of the chase. Was I leading them to Rose and the boat? I circled the block leading to the boatyard, waiting in the shadows. I didn’t see anybody but I still had this strong hunch. I waited a full fifteen minutes, then sprinted the last hundred yards, jumping the gate and lumbering across the dock like a ton of bricks.
The Sea Princess looked beautiful as could be. I ran aboard, crouched in the cockpit and listened for any following footsteps. Rose stuck her head out of the cabin hatch, her face becoming a large smile of relief. As she came forward to hug me, I pushed her away, told her, “Get out the carbine and hurry it up!”
She dived into the cabin. There wasn’t a sound on the dock, not even a light in the boat house. Rose came back and handed me the gun. “Mickey, are you…?”
“Are we squared away with the yardman?”
“Yes. Oh, honey, is…?”
“I’m going to start the motors. Hop up on the dock, ready to throw off the lines.”
“Mickey, you don’t know how happy I am to see you. I…”
“Later. Stand by the ropes,” I barked, raising the motor hatch.
The engines worked on the first try. Rose loosened the lines and leaped aboard. Seconds later we were following the channel buoys out past the breakwater, the Sea Princess starting to dance to the rhythm of the waves.
“Hon, are you okay? Were you hurt?” Rose asked, a dream even bundled in a suit of oilskins. “What happened all this…?”
“Take the wheel while I raise the sails. Keep her headed as she is.” I had the bow aimed straight toward Europe.
When the Sea Princess was racing along under full sail I cut the engines and sat at the wheel, watching the starlit sky for a plane, or twisting to look aft for boat lights. There was a large tug off our port but she wasn’t making for us. Rose started to ask again what had happened and I told her to keep still. I was still too scared to kiss her, still afraid that something else would happen. She cried, “My God, you think I’ve had a cinch waiting on the boat? Going crazy with fear…?”
“Later, honey,” I said, listening to the sound of the wind in the rigging, the regular gurgle and slap of the waves; straining my ears for the throb of a speedboat
.
Calling me a name Rose went below. I screamed at her not to turn on the cabin lights. I sat by the wheel, feeling better by the second. The ocean was my backyard, the Sea Princess my home. I waved in the cold darkness as we passed the tug, hundreds of yards to port. Feeling in my pocket for a cigar, I touched the private badge, the billy—and tossed them over with a laugh.
An hour later, when land was part of the blackness on the horizon and not a ship in sight, I lashed the wheel and went below. Rose was in her bunk and I could smell whiskey. When I touched her face in the darkness she hit my hand. I jerked her up and into my arms. Kissing her, I whispered, “Now we can talk. It’s all over, baby. Nothing will ever come between us again, honey.”
With a sigh she returned my kiss, warm lips demanding, her hands digging into my neck. “Mickey, Mickey, you frightened me so! You acted so hard—and strange. I was afraid you thought I was responsible for whatever happened to you. We should never have come to the States.”
“Coming to the States was the smartest move we ever made. Things are going to turn out very fine. We… Easy with the fingers, honey, my head is busted—a little.”
“Oh, God, Mickey, you’re hurt!”
“I’m fine although I was hit with everything but the custard pie. That’s why I wanted to get the boat going, be free of all the—the—mess we stepped into, before I kissed you.”
“Mickey, all the time I was alone on the boat, down here in the cabin, I did nothing but remember how we had it at Ansel’s. Swimming, lounging around, enjoying each other. All I could think of was how much I wanted that again! What dopes we were to give it up, risk this.”
“We’ll have all that again, Rose, and even better. I know what this is all about, and soon we’ll be able to stop running. Hon, let’s go on deck and talk.”
She tried to pull me down to the bunk, whispering, “It’s cold on deck. And since when did you get to be such a talker?”
“Baby, we’re only a dozen miles offshore, and there’s bound to be boat traffic. After what we’ve been through, I wouldn’t dare cross a street without waiting for the green light, much less sail blind.”
We bundled up and sat beside the wheel and I was still talking when dawn lightened the sky. I went over everything that had happened to me—Jock’s explanation. When I was finished Rose asked, “But how did these college kids know about you?”
“I figure they’re on one of the Arab sides, and somehow they had a guy planted in Sowor’s house. Maybe a roomer there. Or could be the old jockey was playing both sides of the street, tipped them off the same time he called the oil detectives. Actually not much of a deal. They tell the old guy it’s worth fifty bucks or so to phone them if anybody comes asking for Sowor. Or, as I said, these kids had to live someplace, so maybe they had a room in the house. And me, shooting off my big yap about Me-Lucy, brought everybody on the run.”
“If the detectives saw you at the railroad station, you think they followed you out to your friend’s house and back? And you didn’t believe me when I said I’d been hounded by an army of dicks!”
“No army. Soon as they got this hot tip, the agency probably put a few guys on it. When they lost me they did the obvious thing: covered the rail stations, bus and plane terminals, for that night. But the hell with that; it will be over now we know the score.”
Rose shook her head. “I don’t even know why I held onto those letters—the diary—except they were with the money.”
“It wouldn’t have made any diff if you’d known and torn ’em up. They—all of them—would still have thought you had the diary, still chased you. In fact, not having it would leave us worse off.”
“One thing I don’t understand: that Fed wanted to shoot me. And those detectives who tried to run me down with their car. If I was dead, how would they have got the diary? What was their angle in trying to knock me off?”
“Rose, what happened to you was part real and partly your imagination. They never…”
“My God, after what you’ve been through how can you still go with that imagination kick?”
“It’s because I have been through the mill that I can say it was part imagination—now. Sure, I saw that clown in Atlantic City loosen his gun, but he never drew it or tried to use the rod, so I have to figure he probably did it to frighten you. When you’re frightened silly, everything becomes distorted. Remember I told you how I slugged an innocent janitor, all because he wore a feather in his hat? The way my imagination was cooking, if I’d been packing a gun I might easily have killed him. When you’re on the run, scared stiff, the least sound or shadow becomes magnified in our hysterical minds into a million other things—most of them phony—but all of them real to us. Another point: as Jock said, the police in their own way, unofficially, thought they were doing the right thing. They probably didn’t even know what or why you were wanted—only that some big apple asked to see you. In short, we were being hunted by a half a dozen different guys and groups, each with their own angle. With some it was duty, or their job, and with others, the fast buck. But now you have only one more decision to make and then it will be over for us.”
“What’s that?”
“What to do with the diary. That’s the target, the hot potato we’ve unknowingly been carrying around with us.”
“It’s an easy decision,” Rose said, getting up. “I’ll throw the lousy thing over right this second.”
I pulled her down into my lap again. “That won’t help, hon. They could still think you have it. We not only have to get rid of it, but make damn sure all sides know we haven’t got it. Then there won’t be any point in looking for us.”
“What do we do, put an ad in the paper that we’ve destroyed it?”
“Let’s cut the sarcasm until we’re way in the clear. We sell it! Jock offered ten grand. But if you contact the private eye agency working for the oil companies—and I have their address—you can certainly get fifty or even a hundred grand. Once the diary is put to use, we’re off the hook. All you have to decide is who we sell it to.”
“Shouldn’t we both decide that?”
“The letters are yours.”
“Stop it, you’ve taken your share of beatings, too. Are you sure your head is okay?”
“Hon, the way I see it, in another hour I’ll change course, start heading south. In a day or two we’ll put in at Norfolk, or some port. I’ll take a plane to Chicago or Washington, contact the agency, and get rid of the diary. Then I’ll…”
“And get yourself killed!”
“No, we’re giving them what they want. Working out that part will be a breeze. The big decision is how much dough do we want for it.”
Rose was silent for a long time. The sun started to streak the horizon. She stood up. “The sea looks pretty…and so calm. After that Cape storm—it seems ages ago—I never thought I’d want to be out here. Can you heave-to, put out a sea anchor, or something? Let’s us sleep on this.”
“We’re too near the coast for that, much as I want to. You go down and get some shut-eye, then take the wheel and I’ll get in a few hours.”
I let her sleep until 10:00 A.M. and then she took the wheel with instructions to call me the second another ship came in sight or the wind changed. I managed to catch several minutes sleep in the next few hours. The sun was out clean and strong as we were having an early afternoon lunch in the cockpit, both of us eating like pigs. Rose asked when we’d make port. I told her, “Sometime tomorrow morning we can be in Norfolk or Cape Charles. Why?”
“I’ve been thinking about the diary, how we can best wash our hands of it, return to the peace of Ansel’s island. I don’t mind the island now. I don’t think I ever will. Once we get this done with, we can move on to the larger island town if we wish, but I doubt if I’ll ever want to return to the States. Well, island living doesn’t cost much, we have enough money to last us the rest of our lives. We didn’t ask for the dough we have and there’s no one to return it to, even if we wanted to give it b
ack. But to…get more dough… I don’t know, it smacks of blood money. You said Colette and this Frenchman are do-gooders. The thing is, Mickey, we’re all do-gooders at heart. Even you, or you wouldn’t have picked me up on the Key. Now it’s…”
“I was only thinking of doing myself some good then.”
“Maybe that’s why people are do-gooders…all that stuff about doing unto others. Somehow I have the feeling if three hundred people were killed, we ought to do something about it.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, at least try to see that whoever is responsible is caught, and stop another village from being wiped out. How would we feel if Ansel’s island had been in a massacre?”
“Rose, are you saying you want to get involved in all this?”
She shook her head. “No, mainly I’m playing it safe. If we sell it to the oil companies we don’t know what they’ll use the diary for. Also we don’t know how to get in touch with the other groups, say the Algerians, or which is the good one. This Jacques might be a bastard, too, but I have to go along with him. If an ordinary housewife like Colette okays him, then I have to bet on Jacques. I think we should send him the letters.”
“All right, only it means a loss of about ninety grand, the kind of green we’ll never have a chance at again, so be sure in your mind.”
“Mickey, I don’t want any money. For one thing it can be a trail to us, in case Jacques is a wrongo guy. And if he’s on the level, then taking the ten grand is blood money. Having that kind of dough wouldn’t make for happiness. If we’re getting rid of a dream-buster, let’s not take on another one. What do you think?”
“I’m with you. But when it comes to passing up a hundred thousand bucks, you make the decision.”
“When we make port you send it to him registered mail, with a false return name and address. And a letter telling him to do what he wants, but to let it be known he has the letters, even if they contain a lot of slop. What do you think Josef wrote? The truth?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s a novel, or a bunch of outright lies.”
