“You’ll hear about this, Burdette!”
“That’s right, I’ll hear about it. Dead men don’t hear so good.”
“Actually, Helm’s probably long gone by this time. Hell, he knows he’s outgunned; he didn’t have anything on him but a lousy little thirty-eight.”
“Go ahead, talk yourself into it. You’re not talking me into it, or the kid here. And if you want us to help you rig that mess inside so it looks a little more convincing, you’d better tell us how you want it done before the stuff congeals. Or before somebody sends some cops to investigate the goddamned Battle of Miami.” There was a little pause, and I heard Burdette speaking in a different, gentler voice, “Come on, Sonny. If you’re going to shoot at them, you’re going to have to learn to look at them.”
They moved inside where I couldn’t hear them. I pad-died gently toward the dock and found myself a spot where a big piling gave me protection and a crossbeam gave me something to stand on. I waited. Eventually, having put his gang to work, Lawson came. They never learn, particularly the ones with fancy gold badges. Well, that wasn’t quite right. Burdette had learned; he knew. But this one couldn’t conceive of the possibility that there were people around who could get tired of having revolvers and submachine guns waved their way, and even fired their way, by wonderful, important Mr. Lawson. He’d had two cracks at me and that was enough. Besides, a dead body was still needed, badly, and I wasn’t about to offer mine.
His thick figure came around the deckhouse, heading for the ladder. He heaved himself up and reached up to lay his weapon on the dock above so he’d have both hands free to climb with. It was really very unsporting of me. He didn’t have a chance, any more than the girl in the deckhouse window had had a chance. I just leaned over a bit for a clear target and shot him four times in the body, through the ladder. It was wasteful, one bullet would probably have done the job, two would have been perfectly adequate insurance, but I wanted to be absolutely certain and, besides, I was curious about whether or not the cartridges would all fire after the way they’d been submerged. But they do very well with ammunition these days.
He clung there for a despairing second or two after the last shot, like the dying hippie girl; then he tumbled limply back onto the deck. I pitched the weapon down there and watched it slide along the deck and come to rest against the motionless body. A moment later, young Ellershaw came charging around the deckhouse, submachine gun ready; but Burdette was close behind him, and clamped a strong hand on his shoulder as he prepared to spray the neighborhood with unaimed fire.
“Easy, Sonny.”
“But he shot Mr. Lawson! He can’t have gone far!”
Burdette was leaning over the body. He rose holding the revolver—my revolver, but we don’t carry weapons that can be traced. Burdette didn’t look toward the dock at all, but his voice was loud and clear as he said, “It’s too damned bad, but at least we’ve got us a nice corpse with the bullet holes in front. I wasn’t looking forward to arguing that little detail with the medical examiner, the way it was originally set up. And we’ve even got a gun to match the holes. Come on, Junior, lend a hand and let’s fix the pretty picture so we can report to Mr. Godalmighty Bennett how his fine upstanding agent died heroically at the hands of those murderous activists. . .
I slipped away while they were taking care of it. It was a long hike along the canal to the marina Brent had told me about; and several times I had to dive for cover as police cars went by, heading for the scene of the crime at last. The little pickup truck was parked with some other cars in the marina lot and I attracted no attention getting it away. When I’d put a safe distance behind me, I stopped at a gas station, closed at that hour, and used the public phone there. I hadn’t expected to catch Brent himself, since he’d been assigned to watch over Eleanor Brand; but he was supposed to have somebody covering the phone in his absence. I was totally unprepared for hearing Martha Devine’s voice.
“I thought you were in Washington by this time,” I said.
“Who said I was going to Washington? I just went to the airport to see Daddy off; then I. . . Matt.”
Her voice warned me. “Trouble?”
“Yes. Your friend, Mr. Brent’s been hurt and he wanted to be sure you came to the hospital as soon as you could. He said . . . he said for you to shoot your way in if you had to, but he had to see you right away.”
Assorted fears went through my mind very quickly.
“You don’t know. . . .”
“I know very little, Matt. Just that the poor boy wants you badly; he insisted on my coming here to wait for your call so I could make you understand it was very important.”
“How the hell did you get mixed up in? . . . Never mind. What hospital?”
“St Margaret’s.” She gave me the address. “I’ll meet you at the information desk. . . . Oh, Matt.”
“What?”
“Don’t be too hard on him. I’m sure he did his best.”
Chapter 24
You learn to turn it off. There was absolutely no point in my wearing out the brain cells as I drove by, wondering how badly Brent was hurt or what was happening to Eleanor Brand in his absence. That information would be forthcoming in due time. Speculating about it beforehand could gain me nothing.
One unpleasant subject that I had to consider right away, however, was the possibility that I, like Bennett, had been played for a sucker. Rather belatedly, I was beginning to realize that, if the anonymous telephone lady with the husky voice had merely wanted to direct Bennett’s attention to those grubby kids calling themselves the Sacred Earth Protective Force, she could have called Bennett directly. Why had she brought me into it at all? Unless she knew Bennett’s reputation well enough to know that he’d never have shared the dangerous information with us if it had been given to him alone. He’d have managed without us somehow.
The way she’d done it, however, through me, she could be fairly certain that, having received the address and dutifully passed it on as interdepartmental cooperation re-
quired, I’d very probably take a part in the ensuing action, meaning that I would, at least for a little while, be unavailable for bodyguard duty. The job of watching over Eleanor Brand would temporarily devolve upon somebody else. It was likely that, lulled by the total lack of activity to date— after all, the only threat to Eleanor’s well-being since I’d been watching over her had been Bennett’s own abortive action—we would not go to the trouble of hastily importing another experienced senior agent, of whom we don’t have an unlimited number, for a mere evening’s protection of a lady who seemed to be in no real danger at the moment. We’d simply make do with what we had at hand.
So we—to hell with we, I—had sent an untrained boy to do a man’s bodyguard job while I went off to swim in dark canals for reasons that were beginning to seem less and less compelling. Well, it’s hard to do a good job of kicking yourself while driving a car; and the undersized Japanese pickup had all the bad habits of any unloaded truck with no weight on the rear wheels. Pushing it hard, I had to handle it carefully so I wouldn’t lose it; even then, it took me longer than it should have to reach the hospital. Martha was waiting when I got there, sitting on an upholstered backless bench facing the information desk.
She got up as I approached and gave me a curious look, reminding me that I was no shining example of immaculate sartorial splendor; but what the hell, my clothes had dried and I’d brushed off most of the mud, and these informal days it’s the guy with the crease in his pants who looks conspicuous.
“Are you all right?” Martha asked.
I nodded. “How is he?”
“Not really critical, but he won’t let them do anything, give him anything, until he talks to you. He’s afraid they’ll put him out.”
“Where do we go?”
She said, “The doctor just went up. He said if you arrived, sit tight; he’ll be right back.”
“Sure.” I hesitated. “Do you know where Eleanor Brand is?”
“Elly?” Martha frowned, surprised. “No, I have no idea, why should I? I haven’t seen her since this afternoon.” Her lips tightened. “After the way she abused my girlish trust a while back, we’re not exactly friends, remember? Why do you ask?”
“Brent was supposed to be keeping an eye on her for us. We thought she might be in danger.”
“It couldn’t happen to a nicer person.” Martha threw a wry grin my way. “Don’t mind me; I’m just being bitchy. But Brent didn’t tell me that.” She sounded mildly resentful.
I grinned. “He probably wasn’t sure how much you were supposed to know, even if you were the boss’s daughter. What happened, anyway?”
She drew a long breath to prepare herself, and launched into the recital, “After seeing Daddy off, I went into one of the airport restaurants—well, kind of a bar, actually—and had a drink; then I remembered I hadn’t eaten anything since I left New Mexico this morning. You can’t eat that plastic stuff they hand you on airplanes nowadays. The bar girl said I could have dinner right there in the booth; but of course it took practically forever. They had to bring it all from the real restaurant next door, and they didn’t break their necks working at it. But I didn’t really mind. Daddy had given me a number to call so I could find out how . . . how your expedition had turned out before I went to bed; but I knew it was too early for that. So I had a slow brandy afterward; and suddenly there was your friend, Brent, at the bar. I waved and he came over, but I must say he didn’t seem very pleased to see me. Kind of preoccupied. Not very flattering; but he did say, when I asked, that he had a car and would be happy to give me a ride to my hotel and save me a taxi. Well, he could hardly say anything else. They jumped us in the airport parking lot.” She hesitated. “I. . . wasn’t much use, Matt. In fact, I was totally useless, just a damned helpless movie ingenue cowering back against the cars while her escort. ... It happened so fast!”
“How many?” I asked.
“Two. Young. Black. One came from nowhere and snatched my purse; and when I cried out and Brent grabbed him, the other jumped out from behind the cars and hit Brent on the head with something. Brent fell down and the one with my purse turned around and kicked him a couple of times. Then the big one reached down and hit him again with whatever it was and they ran off. . .. After a moment, she went on, “The police found my bag almost right away, only a little distance off, with only the money missing. They think it was just an ordinary mugging, but it wasn’t, was it?”
“Probably not.”
“After seeing him safe in the ambulance, I drove his car to his place—he’d given me the keys—to wait for your call as I’d promised him. There was another man there, the backup man, Brent had called him; and he was very suspicious of me. He insisted on confirming my identity with Washington before he’d let me near the phone.”
“As he damned well should have,” I said. “Did Brent tell you what he was doing at the airport?”
“He said . . ." She frowned with the effort of remembering. “He said he’d been seeing somebody off and . . . and making arrangements to follow them. Elly?”
I shrugged. “It’s a guess. What the hell is that doctor doing?”
“Matt.”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?” she asked.
I frowned. “Who, the doctor? How the hell would I. . . . Oh, Brent? Something flossy, Michael, I think. Michael Brent. Why?”
“He . . . seems like a very nice boy, too nice to be mixed up in Daddy’s dirty games. And yours.”
She sounded a bit patronizing, the very experienced, very grownup, widow-lady in the smart white suit, Mrs. Robert Devine, looking down condescendingly upon the children at their foolish play. Her disapproval of her parent’s activities and mine didn’t bother me, I was hardened to that; but I was tempted to point out to her that the boy she was referring to was a promising member of a respected law firm; and that she wasn’t so damned ancient herself. But the woman behind the information desk was trying to catch our attention.
“Dr. Levine just called,” she said. “You can go up now.”
The doctor was waiting for us when we got off the elevator, a rather small man with a white coat, a brown face, a big nose and intelligent, compassionate brown eyes. “I hope this is really important,” he said.
I asked, “What’s the damage, Doctor?”
“That’s what we want to determine, but the patient refuses to cooperate until . . . we do know that a couple of ribs are broken. There were two blows to the cranium, one fairly severe. We are concerned about the possibility of a fracture. . . . Make it as quick as you can, please. I wouldn’t allow it at all, but he did keep saying it was important, and a disturbed mental state can be as damaging as a little delay. So help him get it off his mind, whatever it is, but please don’t take any longer than absolutely necessary.”
I nodded, and went inside first, impolite, followed by Martha and Dr. Levine, polite. Brent was lying in the bed with his eyes closed. His freckles showed very clearly on his pale face. His head was bandaged; and under the hospital gown, his chest was obviously strapped up tightly. The doctors love doing that to you, and it doesn’t do a damned bit of good that I’ve ever discovered. The ribs will heal in their own good time, strapped or unstrapped; and all you can do is grit your teeth and wait for it to happen. When you can laugh and cough without hurting, you know you’re cured. But I guess the medical profession doesn’t feel it’s doing its duty if it isn’t doing something, even if it’s hot and uncomfortable and useless. Brent opened his eyes and licked his lips.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I loused it up.”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Where did Brand go?”
“Back to the Bahamas. She got a phone call. She went back to talk to somebody named Einar Kettleman who . . .”
“I know who Kettleman is. Where?”
“Same hospital in Nassau. He’d been picked up at sea by a fisherman and brought to one of the Out Islands first. . . ."
“Never mind, I can get all that elsewhere. How’d she get away from you?”
“She was mad at us, at you, for not letting her go with you. She told me to . . . go fly my kite. She said she was tired of having us ... us government creeps hanging around her. She said ... by this time obviously no real danger . . . Warren Peterson could do all the bodyguarding needed. I was to tell you . . . tell you goodbye and . . . chuck you, Farley. Sorry, but that’s what she said. They had tickets, she and Peterson. Commercial flight. I couldn’t get any. Great bodyguard, couldn’t get on the damned flight, all full up. Couldn’t reach Delman, off on a job somewhere. . . ."
“Delman?”
“Murray Delman, the charter pilot who. . ."
“Sure, go on.”
“Left word. He’ll be back and ready to go again oh-three-hundred. Flight all cleared. Called Fred, he’ll pick Brand up and watch over her after she lands in Nassau, until relieved. Best I could do. Sorry made such a mess of . . ."
“You did okay,” I said. “You did fine. Now just relax and let the doctor . . ."
“No! Don’t go!” There was a breathless urgency in his voice. “That’s not all. What I really wanted to tell you. . . . Should have reported this afternoon, but everybody so busy and I thought we’d have plenty of time later. Investigation. Down in the Keys, remember?”
“I remember, but can’t it wait?”
“Not wait. Now. Serena Lorca.”
“What?”
“The Lorca girl. Serena. They call her Rina. Lorca has a fishing boat, big job, twin Detroit diesels. All those hard Mafia types down here have big chrome-plated sportfishermen, good for secret meetings with the boys. And girls. And good for the ego. Sometimes they even catch some fish. But Lorca’s daughter likes sailboats better. A lot better. That’s what . . . what Captain Harriet Robinson discovered: Rina loves sailboats so much she’s bought four of them—five now—in the past two years. Five good-sized cruising sailboats, at least a quarter of a million buck
s’ worth, even secondhand, the way she got them. Bought but not sold. No record of sale anywhere. Interesting?”
“Very interesting,” I said. “Give me Rina.”
“Serena Lorca, daughter, twenty-two, five-four, one-thirty-five, short dark hair, brown eyes. . . .. Supposed to be good sailor but lost a boat offshore couple-three years ago, cruising with a friend. Tumbleweed, thirty-footer, sloop rig, built by . . .. built by. . . forget. That one daddy bought new for her. Oh, it was Parsons’ Boatyard, Lauderdale, remember now.”
I said, “Never mind. Eleanor told me about that accident.”
“No, listen!” Brent’s voice was insistent. “Storm, dismasted. Girlfriend knocked overboard by falling spar, couldn’t save. Mast, lying in water alongside, smashed through hull like battering ram in heavy seas before she could cut it free, working alone. Picked up in life raft after five days adrift, bad condition, hospital, psychiatric treatment. Phony.”
“What?”
Brent licked his lips. “It’s a phony, Matt. ‘The fallen mast smashed through the hull like a battering ram in the heavy seas.’ That’s what she told reporters. Only she got it word for word out of an old magazine article. I remembered reading the story. I dug out the magazine; I keep them. It’s at my place, along with a list of the boats she’s bought. Story’s about a guy who lost his boat and wife in a storm off Cape Mendocino, California. Serena cribbed practically every detail right out of the article. And I back-checked the weather records at the time, no storm. Squall, maybe; there could have been a local squall, they come and go. But it didn’t blow hard enough or long enough to raise any heavy seas the whole time she was out there. Think about it.”
The Revengers Page 23
