Ten minutes?
A skittering cloud bore up along the sky to hide the sun. The beach went gray under the sudden shadow. In the brief and sunless pause, the wind snapped sharper, the waves seemed to break behind me with renewed violence. I forced my brain into the channel of memory, toying with the facts, the truths that had come alive last night. Only a few minutes ago, my mind had carried me here with confidence. And now? Was it the loneliness that built doubt in me? I muttered an obscenity at myself and held my eyes on the beach. And time stood still for me.
Fifteen minutes?
Twenty minutes?
Then, suddenly, a tiny figure emerged on the beach. It was a woman. She carried something as she moved. She ran out from the dunes to the left of the club. She ran fast. At the edge of the water, she paused to put on flippers. Then she hit the surf and disappeared in the waves.
She came into my line of vision a few minutes later. She was swimming a diagonal course, approaching the end of the jetty obliquely, avoiding the head-on thrust of the big combers. She moved with professional grace, her body loose and free in the sea, her feet setting up an almost mechanical splash.
And when she came closer I knew her, of course.
She was Mari Beranville.
I slid between the slippery rocks and into the ocean on her side of the jetty. She was treading water now. She would be diving in a moment. Out here, on the lee side of the rocks, the sea was a bit calmer. I adjusted my mask and waited.
Mari seemed bent on exploration at first, swimming along the ridge of the jetty as though scanning the shadows for something hidden. She ran out of air and came up in a hurry. She dove again immediately, this time staying down a bit longer. When she surfaced, she was holding a small metallic box in her hand. At the moment when I saw the box, I dropped into the sea and swam toward her under water. She had begun a slow crawl for shore. But I stopped her, grabbing her legs and kicking hard.
She kicked out at me. She slipped and squirmed and lashed at me with her free hand. She was strong, much stronger than I figured. On land, I might have flattened her with an easy punch. I might have tripped her, smacked her off balance. But deep water is a great equalizer, a true test of swimming stamina.
When I jerked the metal box from her hand, she kicked out at me, trying for my gut. She kneed me, thumped me, working to hold me under water where she could strangle me easily.
But I was able to surface and grab her again, sucking in a lungful of air as I whipped the mask away. She had already made up her mind about me. She was determined to stay with me, to drown me. I tucked the metal box inside my trunks. She was challenging me in my element. It would give me pleasure to try some personal water tricks on her. I let her come to me and slide under me. She held my legs in a viselike grip. She pulled.
At that moment I found her hair and yanked. Her body tightened against the pain. She would be screaming her head off in anger if her head were above the water. Instead, she tried for a Dracula lunge at my neck.
“You bitch!” I burbled, kicking out at her. My knee felt the soft pillow of her stomach.
She sagged and bent double and lunged under me. It was an old trick, a deception sometimes used in battling a shark, dropping down to push the knife up into his gut. I let myself fall with her, kicking out again in a try for her stomach. But I couldn’t go too deep. Already my lungs were screaming for air, telegraphing dizziness to my brain. It was time to move up. In the quick minute of decision, I caught a quick over-the-shoulder look at Mari. She had shot out of reach, off to my right. She had hit the surface before me.
And when I sucked in a frantic gulp of fresh sea air, her strategy came through to me.
She had an assistant up on top.
She had Ziggi at her side.
There was no time for fancy decisions. As I surfaced, I saw them close by, high on the rim of a rolling wave. Ziggi showed no signs of his alcoholic daze. He must have awakened after we shook him to life in his nest behind the night club. He must have moved fast, probably after he overheard Chuck’s impersonation on the telephone. And right now, he was moving fast again, beating his way through the water toward me with Mari at his side.
“The box,” he yelled. “You die for this, Gant.”
But I didn’t want to die. There was one way out for me and that way was down. There was a chance I could outfox them under the water. I grabbed the idea, flipping over and diving deep. There was no time for checking him. He would be behind me, but if I could reach the rocks he would be easier to lose. I put all my strength into the plan, beating my way ahead, thanking myself for the long hours of practice at this sort of movement.
But Ziggi had practised, too.
He caught me at the first surfacing for fresh air. He was alongside me and all over me before I could drop again. His muscular arms lashed out at me. Mari came up from behind me, clutching and clawing at my neck, struggling to throttle me, so that he could carry me down with him. The world spun over me, the sky a wheeling, skidding arc of blue. For some crazy reason my eyes caught hold of the two gulls again. They dipped low over the water, almost close enough to touch. And beyond them, against the shore line? A swimmer? Somebody coming out this way?
I didn’t have time to check. A hand swept over my face. Another hand flattened and smacked my face, high up near the eye. Then my breath stopped. Then my eyes went dull and dead. He was holding me under. He was strangling me. I fought to work my body away from him. But my lungs had died a little while ago. In the vague gray veil of water around me a million bubbles began to break and bounce, somewhere off to the left.
For an impossible seconds I managed to reach the surface again. A quick and desperate gasp of air came through Ziggi’s throttling fingers. But it wasn’t enough to revive me. It wasn’t enough to tell me whether the movement off to my left meant anything.
Because in the next frantic gurgle of time, my lights went out.
I dropped into the soft wet blanket of the sea.
CHAPTER 25
12:17 P.M.
The sand was wet and cold and sticky under my gut, and in my nose a mixture of strange smells sickened me. Under my wakening eye, the grains of sand were a pattern of nothingness, a wall of gloom. The odor of salt and fish and clams made my mouth burst open again, alive with the drool of a dozen buckets of sea water. My lungs sucked and blew, moved by the pressure of the weight on my back. With each thrust of pressure, the water drooled out of me. With each downward thrust, my brain cleared a little more until the weight became a person and the person became a woman and I could feel the silken smoothness of her shanks as she worked to bring me back to life.
“Easy,” she was saying. “Easy, little man.”
“Graghlphhhh,” I mumbled.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said.
“Linda?”
“You talk too much. Relax and vomit some more. Do you good.”
“He all right?” a voice asked.
“He’ll live.”
“He’ll live sooner if you give him this.”
They were turning my body and forcing something through my lips and the sting of it bit deep and made me gag, but not the way I had gagged before. The smell and the taste buds began to function and I knew it was liquor. In that moment, the curtain fell away from my eyes. There were legs around me, a pair of bare legs and another pair, legs with black pants, legs with white. Voices, as mixed and colored as the pants.
And Newberry saying: “You feeling better now, Gant?”
“What happened to Ziggi?”
“These girls almost drowned him. And the other dame, Beranville, too.”
And Chuck’s voice saying: “Linda and Jean. They’re real murder in the water, Steve. They saw you out there with those two. They swam out and gave them hell. Ziggi won’t be out of the hospital for days. And Mari will keep him company.”
; “Which hospital?” I breathed, on my tail now, strong enough to react to the group, especially Newberry, who stood over me with the usual dumb grin on his foolish face. “Those bums should be in jail, Newberry.”
“Sure they should, Gant. And that’s where they are—over in the sick pen in the County Jail. I booked them for assault, after the girls told me what they saw out there.”
“Make it stronger,” I said. “Make it murder.”
“That strong?” he asked. He held up the metal box. He flipped the lid and let me see the glittering baubles inside. “Orlik’s stones. I figured it for robbery, Gant.”
“You figured wrong. They rigged this thing to suck Chuck in as the patsy. They were after Gloria’s little box because Mari knew her roommate was hiding it out on the rocks. That was why they murdered Gloria. That was why Mari and Ziggi followed her out there and watched her dive to put the box under the jetty for safe-keeping. They drowned her and brought her back to Chuck’s place. They stabbed her and set her up to look like Chuck’s pigeon. They even gave her a shower to get the sea water off her skin. But they couldn’t get it out of her lungs. Ask Simon, your coroner.”
“I knew about it last night,” he said. “That was what brought me to New York.”
“Sure it was.” He was giving me the wide open and innocent grin he used when he was working with Safe and Loft as a city dick. He was trying to sell me sincerity and steadfastness. But on him it didn’t look good. More than likely he went into town to make some kind of a deal with Saxon. More than likely he would have crawled last night; completely unconcerned about clearing Chuck. More than likely he was still the same petty crook he always would be. But it didn’t matter anymore.
I was looking beyond him to where Chuck stood, his arm around Jean, where it belonged. He was smiling down at me, thanking me with his eyes. I blew his girl a kiss to tell her that I owed her something for saving my life.
“How about me?” said Linda, reading my mind. She sat close to me, taking a deep swig from the bottle of liquor, offering me some. “Take another swallow of this, little man. I like you better when you’re conscious.”
I took another swallow. I got up and tried my legs, leaning on her for support. She walked me away from the group, letting me feel the warmth of her body as she moved with me.
“I’ll be all right after a short walk,” I said.
“Got any destination, little man?”
“Once around the beach and I’ll breathe again.”
“Don’t exert yourself,” she said with a little pinch on my arm. “The way I see it, you’ve got just enough strength left to make my cabana.”
“Now? On an empty stomach?”
“Eventually,” she said. “Why not now?”
About the Author
Lawrence Lariar (1908–1981) was an American novelist, cartoonist and cartoon editor, known for his Best Cartoons of the Year series of cartoon collections. He wrote crime novels, sometimes using the pseudonyms Michael Stark, Adam Knight and Marston la France.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1959 by Lawrence Lariar
This authorized edition copyright © 2018 by the estate of Lawrence Lariar and The Mysterious Press
Originally published as Death Is Confidential by Hillman Books in 1959
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5637-3
This 2019 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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LAWRENCE LARIAR
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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The Corpse in the Cabana Page 14
