Operation Fireball d-3

by Dan J. Marlowe

  I sat and watched the cloakroom door. Erikson could have got rid of Calkins already, or they could still be inside. Erikson had gone up a couple of notches in my estimation. If I’d been him, I don’t know if I’d have had the wit to claim to be Drake. It had taken the sword right out of Calkins’ hands when the two descriptions failed to match. It irked me, though, that I had had to be rescued by Erikson, the amateur. And it had been a rescue. Without him, I might easily have had to shoot my way out of that hotel room.

  Five minutes went by and I was beginning to think they had left already. Then Erikson and Calkins emerged together from the cloakroom. Calkins went directly to the front entrance and walked outside to the street. I was too far away to see his expression, but he could hardly have been happy with the result of his investigation.

  Erikson came into the bar. Without breaking stride he continued on to the men’s room. I gave it two minutes and followed him. There was one other man inside. I washed my hands until he left. Then Erikson and I stood with Erikson halfway into one of the private toilets so he could step inside and close the door if anyone else happened to enter.

  Now that I was rid of Calkins, I really had only one other thing on my mind. After having his nose rubbed in the subject of Hazel Andrews just now, and in circumstances that left neither Hazel nor me looking particularly bright, what was Erikson’s reaction going to be when he found Hazel behind the stick at The Castaways?

  Erikson spoke first. “The deputy is satisfied that he’s run into a stone wall. He’s not as unhappy about it as you might expect. He let it slip that he felt the sheriff had given him a job to do that the sheriff had felt it politically inexpedient to take upon himself.” Erikson was studying me. “From the sound of things, you ought to get yourself a less conspicuous woman. Calkins spoke of her size, her looks, her money, and her temper. It was hard to tell which impressed him most.”

  He said it almost jovially. I couldn’t understand it. Then it came to me. Just as it had been a relief to me to find that Erikson could handle himself capably in an emergency, he must be feeling the same way about me after learning from the deputy the details of what had taken place at the ranch. Before, he’d been taking me strictly on Slater’s word.

  I ignored the remarks about Hazel. “Before you leave the hotel right now, Mr. Drake,” I said to Erikson, “I’d appreciate your stopping at the front desk and checking out.” I handed him two one-hundred-dollar bills from my thin reserve fund. I didn’t want him to think I had been dependent upon the $50,000 now that he might have a different idea about where it came from.

  “In case someone has Calkins watching the desk, you mean?” I nodded. “I don’t believe he has, but it’s not a bad move. What about your things?”

  “I cleaned out the room.”

  “So where to now?”

  “Key West.”

  “There’s something you can do for me first if you will. One of the items we’re going to need on the cruiser is a combination scanner-transmitter to raise hob with the Cuban radar. There’s a place in San Francisco where components can be bought — some of this material is still classified — but I don’t want to appear there personally. I’ll write out for you what we need, and I’d appreciate it if you’d pick it up and bring it to Key West with you.”

  “Okay.” It seemed little enough to do.

  “See you soon.” Erikson smiled — I realized it was the first smile I’d seen from him — and left the men’s room.

  Two minutes later I picked up my bag at the bell captain’s desk and left the Hotel Aztec and San Diego.

  The first thing I noticed about Key West was the heat.

  At Miami after the flight from San Francisco the temperature had been 82°. At Key West International Airport it was 87°, and it was a humidity-boosted increase. I could feel my clothes beginning to stick to me during the short walk from the terminal to the cabstand.

  The September-afternoon flight from Miami to Key West in an elderly DC-3 was picturesque. The color alone would have sent an artist to an LSD pill in an effort to duplicate it. A thousand variations of blues and greens tinted the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf on either side of the scimitar-shaped line of tiny islands extending down to the tip of the Keys.

  The majority of the key islands seen from the air were covered with a dense growth of pine trees and fringed at the water’s edge with a brief skirt of white sand. Many keys appeared uninhabited, but occasionally a glimpse of a white house amid the pines or a boat at a dock could be seen. The overall impression was one of silent isolation.

  “Take me into the center of town,” I told the cabbie, a yachting-capped native with a Spanish cast to his features. I didn’t want to make my first appearance at The Castaways in a cab. The air coming through the cab windows was warm, damp air. There was no hint of a breeze. The landscape was flat as a pool table. Trees grew in profusion in backyards and in parklike areas. I saw Australian pine, date palm, banyan, jacaranda, and tamarind.

  The driver took me to the La Concha Motor Inn on Duval Street. The lobby had a deserted, off-season look. My footsteps echoed hollowly on tile as I approached the front desk. As I registered, I had the feeling I could have any room in the house. “Sorry our restaurant is closed, sir,” the clerk apologized. “The Mermaid Tavern adjoining is open, though.”

  A boy took my bag aboard the elevator. He stopped at the second floor and we picked our way around a welter of beams and braces extending into the corridor. A second elevator shaft was being sunk beside the first. The boy turned on the air-conditioner in my room. The resulting blast of frigid air all but stiffened my wilted collar. I fiddled with the adjustment after the boy accepted my tip and left the room, then stretched out on the bed and breathed lightly until I stopped dripping.

  I didn’t intend to, but I fell asleep. I’d lost an extra day in San Francisco while I waited for the electronics warehouse to chase down some obscure part on Erikson’s list. I hadn’t spent the time with my hands folded, and I’d flown out too soon afterward for my system to have a chance to recover.

  When I awoke, it was almost dark. I showered, but even after a cold rinse my skin felt clammy. I had only long-sleeved white shirts in my bag. I rolled the sleeves, dispensed with tie and jacket, checked the set of my wig in the mirror, and walked down the single flight of stairs to the lobby.

  No one was in sight, not even the clerk or the bellman. I went to the front entrance, opened the glass door, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The first breath was like being hit in the face with a steamy dishrag. The humidity must have been at least ninety. I could feel my skin prickling as moisture built up subcutaneously.

  I walked west on Duval Street, toward the docks. While studying a map of Key West I had been surprised to find how compact it was. Within the business district everything was within walking distance. Flowering trees overhung the sidewalk. I recognized cereus and frangipani. They would have been bushes or shrubs anywhere except in this tropical atmosphere. Foliage was junglelike in its density and in the riot of color given off by outsized blossoms.

  I had dinner at the New England Restaurant, which was on the waterfront with a view of the Key West Bight. When I left the restaurant, I had my course charted. I backtracked a block on Front Street, turned left on Ann, crossed Green, and turned left on Caroline. I passed Peacock Lane and William Street before coming to Margaret. From the intersection I could see the glitter of neon announcing THE CASTAWAYS.

  I walked the half block and turned into its entrance which I was amazed to see had no door. The humid night air drifted inside to mingle with the air conditioning. Hazel was behind the bar. She had on her usual sleeveless buckskin vest. I couldn’t see the rest of her, but I was sure she would be wearing her working uniform of Levis and silver-conched cowboy boots.

  She looked up at my entrance but gave no sign of recognition. There were fewer than a dozen customers in the room, from their looks commercial fishermen. A flight of stairs led up to a second floor, and at
its foot a battered table held an open journal that evidently functioned as a guest registry.

  “Jim Beam,” I said to Hazel as I sat down on a bar stool. She served it to me on the rocks, at the same time cutting her eyes toward the end of the bar. After a sip of my drink I looked down that way. A wiry-looking man in khakis was sitting on the end stool with his back to the wall so he could watch the entire room.

  His skin was dark, whether naturally or from the sun I couldn’t tell. He had black hair, shiny with oil. He was handsome in the pretty-boy style that can still look dangerous. There is a type in the Keys, native to the area, known as a conch. Part-Spanish, part-Indian, part-everything-else, they’re great watermen, raised on the channels and inlets. This man looked the part. He had a half-filled glass with a liquid dark enough to be rum, but his eyes were doing the drinking. He was focused on nothing except Hazel’s movements behind the bar.

  The conversations in the room were so quiet I could hear the drone of the air conditioning. On the walls I could see the fresh paint that Hazel had ordered. She stooped swiftly beneath a hinged flap on the bar top, which permitted her to reach the main floor area near the stairway. She ran upstairs lightly and disappeared around a corner that concealed the second floor landing.

  I slid from the bar stool, crossed the room, and climbed the stairs. Hazel was waiting at the top. I patted her back as she hugged me. “What about the piratical-looking type at the end of the bar?” I asked her.

  “He’s one of ours.” She kept her voice low.

  I glanced at the closed doors of the rooms leading off the second floor corridor. “Anyone up here?”

  “No. Sound carries downstairs.”

  “How do you know he’s one of ours?”

  “Erikson told me.”

  “Erikson is here already?” I hadn’t intended that Erikson would beat me to The Castaways. I had a mental image of Karl Erikson sizing up Hazel behind the bar. “Did he give you a hard time?”

  “Not at all. The one downstairs is Chico Wilson. He’s the boat owner. He’s drinking a hundred-fifty-four-proof Demarara rum. Straight.” Hazel smiled. “Drinking and trying to make me.” She was looking down the stairwell behind me. “Here he comes.” Her voice rose. “Watch it! He has—”

  She placed a palm in my chest and shoved. I staggered backward until my shoulders hit the wall behind me. I could see the Latin-looking type from the bar moving noiselessly up the last few stairs. In his right hand was a curved fishing knife.

  “Take care thish one f’ you, doll,” he assured Hazel. I thought it was funny until I saw his eyes. They were glazed.

  “Now, listen, Chico—” Hazel tried to bar his progress. He moved right through her as if she weren’t there. Considering her size, it was quite a trick.

  “Teach ‘m not horn in ‘f not invited,” he muttered, confronting me in the narrow space.

  “Does the name Erikson mean anything to you?” I said.

  It slowed him, but it didn’t stop him. His thinking processes were submerged under a quart of rum. He continued to herd me into a corner, where I couldn’t escape his knife. I wasn’t wearing my gun, since with only a shirt on it would have been impossible to conceal the outline of the holster. I was lining up a spot on his anatomy to plant my heel when Hazel came up behind him and rabbit-punched him. She really let him have a bunch of knuckles at the end of a full-armed swing.

  It would have floored an ordinary man. All it did to him was spin him around in her direction. “Th’ hell you doin', doll?” he growled at her. The hand with the knife in it massaged the back of his neck.

  “That’s my fella you’re fixing on carving,” Hazel informed him. “He’s one of us.”

  He blinked at her several times. I couldn’t tell if it was from the rabbit punch or the news. He turned full around to examine me for a deliberate moment. Plainly he wasn’t impressed by what he saw. He turned back to Hazel again. “Your fella o’ny because you haven’t known me long,” he told her. The knife disappeared in some sleight-of-hand too rapid for me to follow. I couldn’t even tell if it went into his shirt or his pants. “Shorry. Buy drink for ‘s all, okay?”

  “Okay,” Hazel agreed. She shepherded him toward the stairs. “Come on, Earl,” she said to me.

  “Pleased t’ meetcha, Earl,” Wilson said over his shoulder from the middle of the stairs.

  “We shouldn’t be seen in the bar together,” I reminded Hazel.

  Wilson turned around and started back up the stairs. “You refusin’ to drink with me?” he demanded belligerently.

  “I’ll bring the drinks upstairs,” Hazel said hastily. “Go into the first room there.” She motioned to the door on the left.

  “Okay,” Wilson said with a drunk’s sudden change of direction. The first thing he did upon entering the pleasantly furnished room was to turn off the air conditioning. “Too cold,” he said. I sat and sweltered for twenty minutes while Wilson drank rum and talked to Hazel during the intervals when she wasn’t running downstairs to take care of the bar customers. Wilson crossed me off his list as soon as he found out I didn’t know anything about boats. Hazel, though, he liked. “Me’n you’s gonna get real friendly,” he said to her. “I’m gonna screw you till your belly button turns red, white, an’ purple.”

  Hazel smiled. Wilson stood up and went into the bathroom. For all the rum, he was still walking in a straight line. “If you’re waiting for him to pass out, forget it,” Hazel said to me. “I’ve seen his type before. He can go for three days and stay as sharp physically as a razorback hog.”

  “Don’t underestimate the slob,” I warned her. “I’ve seen his type, too. They’re like rattlesnakes. If you cut them in two, the end with the head gets stronger. You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Then, I’ll leave. I’ll be back in the morning to stay.” Wilson came out of the bathroom. “Good night, everyone.”

  He accompanied me to the door, the most genial of hosts, but he remained in the room while Hazel and I went downstairs. I pointed to the absence of a door at the front entrance. “Are you trying to air-condition all of the keys?”

  “It’s the custom of the country,” she replied. “Like New Orleans. No doors. We put a grill up for closing.”

  “Is Erikson staying here tonight?”

  “He said he had something to do but that he would be back tomorrow.”

  “Right. See you then. Keep an eye and a half on friend Chico.”

  “If he flashes that knife again, I have a powder for his rum,” she said. “But I won’t need it. He’ll concentrate now on waiting for me to beg him to take me to bed.”

  She gave me her big smile, and I went out the doorway.

  During the walk back to the La Concha Motor Inn, I came to two decisions.

  The first was to try to find out what Karl Erikson’s business was in Key West that kept him away from The Castaways that night.

  The second was not to appear in the handsome Chico’s presence again without having my.38 available.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By ten o’clock the next morning I was installed in a room at The Castaways. Hazel sat on the bed and watched me unpack. “What comes next?” she wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure. When we all get here—” I stopped as footsteps sounded on the stairway leading up from the first floor. I looked at Hazel. “Our friend Chico?”

  “I doubt it. He should still be sleeping it off.”

  I eased myself to the door, cracked it, and looked out. Karl Erikson’s blond head appeared above the level of the landing. As all of him came into view I could see that he was loaded down with packages. I opened the door wider, crossed the corridor, and threw open the door of the room across from mine.

  Erikson nodded to me as he went inside and dropped his brown-paper-wrapped packages on the bed. They were tied with heavy twine, and the bed bounced from the weight suddenly deposited upon it. The blond man had walked upstairs with the load as easily as i
f he were carrying a loaf of bread.

  I went back to Hazel’s and my room, and Erikson followed a moment later. “Where’s Slater?” I asked him.

  “He’ll be along tomorrow.” Erikson and Hazel exchanged good mornings. I wondered why he didn’t say something to me about Hazel’s presence at The Castaways. “I think we can get going—”

  We both turned at a sound from the doorway. Chico Wilson was standing there in a pair of white underwear shorts that contrasted sharply with the deep tan of his torso and legs. He yawned, stretching his arms akimbo. He had the smooth skin of a girl, but I could see the hard ripple of muscle beneath. “Hi, Karl,” he said. His eyes were clear. There was no outward indication of the load of booze he’d taken on the day before. “Hi”—he snapped his fingers while looking in my direction—“Whatever-your-name-is.”

  “Earl,” I said.

  “Earl,” he repeated. He grinned at Hazel on the bed. “Hi, doll.”

  “You’ve met, then?” Erikson said to me.

  “We’ve met.” I said it with no particular inflection, but I could see Erikson studying me. He didn’t pursue the subject, but I could visualize him putting it away in a file-now-and-come-back-to-later compartment of his orderly mind.

  “Can we take a cruise on the boat, Chico?” Erikson asked.

  “Anytime,” Wilson affirmed. He grinned at Hazel again. “You’re invited, doll.”

  I waited for Erikson to object. When he didn’t, I thought I knew why. A woman aboard the fishing cruiser would give a touristy appearance to the expedition.

  “We’ll meet at the boat in an hour,” Erikson ruled. “Separately.” Whether he realized it or not, his tone had all the flavor of an order from the quarterdeck. “Chico, stop off at this address”—Erikson handed him a slip of paper—“and take what they have for you aboard. There’ll be another load later to be brought here.”