The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  Sail said, “I just talked to Captain Rader.”

  The warp got deeper in the end of the young cop’s mouth. He switched his flashlight on and off in Sail’s eyes, then hung it from the hook on his belt.

  “What about?”

  Sail told them what he had talked to Captain Rader about—the kidnapping, which he said he could not understand. In describing Nola and Blick, whom he did not name—he made no mention of having heard their names—he repeated the words he had used over the telephone.

  When it was over, the young cop stepped forward, jaw first.

  “All right, by God! Now you can tell us the truth!”

  The shaking policeman got up slowly, holding his shiny damp cigar and looking miserable. “Now, Joey, that way won’t do it.”

  Joey grabbed Sail’s right wrist and squeezed it. “The hell it won’t! Lewis says there was human blood on the dock along with the fish blood!”

  The shaking policeman said, “Now, Joey.”

  Joey shouted, “A lot of people heard somebody let out a yip. Even over in the park where I was doing the vice squad’s work, I heard it.”

  Sail held out his left hand to show the tear in the brown callus of the palm.

  “A fishhook made that,” he said. “You saw it bleed. There’s your human blood on the dock.”

  Joey yelled, “Mister sailor, we’ve been checking on you by radio. You cleared from Bimini, the customs tells us. We radioed Bimini. You know what? You were asked to get out of Bimini. A gambling joint went broke in Bimini because one of their wheels had been wired and a lot of lads in the know made a cleaning. It ended up in a brawl and the gambling joint owner went to the hospital.”

  Joey shook his finger at Sail’s throat. “The British police asked around and it began to look as if you had tipped the winners how to play. The joint owner claimed he didn’t know his wheel was wired. It ended up with you being asked to clear out. The only reason you’re not in the Bimini jug is because they couldn’t figure any motive. You didn’t get a cut. You hadn’t lost any jack on the wheel. You didn’t have a grudge against the owner. It was a screwy business, the British said, from beginning to end. But that’s what they think. I think different. You know what I think?”

  “I doubt if it would be interesting,” Sail said dryly.

  “I think you outfoxed ’em. You’re a smooth article. That’s what you think. But you can’t pull this stuff here.”

  The shaking policeman said, “You haven’t got a leg, Joey,” between teeth clicks.

  “I’ll sweat the so-and-so until I got a thousand legs!”

  The freezing policeman groaned, “You should have your behind kicked, Joey.”

  Joey released Sail’s right wrist to frown at the other officer. “Listen, Mister Homicide—”

  The shaking policeman got between Joey and Sail and stood there, saying nothing. Joey frowned at him, then sucked at his lower lip, pulling it out of shape.

  “Hell, if you gotta run this, run it!” he said.

  He turned and stamped up the companion, across the deck and, judging from the sounds, had some kind of an accident and nearly fell overboard getting from the boat to the dock, but finally made it safely.

  The other policeman, grinning without much meaning in it, extended a hand which, when Sail took it, was hot and unnatural. After he held the hand a moment, Sail could feel it trembling.

  “I’m Captain Chris of homicide,” the officer said. “I want to thank you for reporting your trouble to Captain Rader, and I want to congratulate you on your narrow escape from those two. But next time, don’t take such chances. Never fool with hop and guns. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything of your attacker and his girlfriend or sister, whichever she was. I hope you have a good time in Miami in the meantime. We have a wonderful city. Florida has a wonderful climate.” He shook with his chill.

  The rabbity man, Lewis, who had not said anything, finished putting things in his bag, picked up a camera with a photoflash attachment which had been unnoticed on a bunk, and went up the companion, stepping carefully, as one who was not used to boats. He got onto the dock carefully with bag and camera. Captain Chris followed.

  Sail said, “Quinine and whiskey is supposed to be good for malaria. But only certain quinines.”

  “Thanks,” said Captain Chris. “But I think whiskey gave it to me.”

  They walked away, and young Joey was the only one who looked back.

  The tide stood at flood slack, the water still, so that things did not float away. Something bright was bobbing on the water, and Sail got a light. He found five of the bright things when he hunted. Used photographic flashlight bulbs, with brass bases not corroded enough by the salt water for them to have been in long. Sail went below and looked around. Enough things were out of place to show the hooker had been searched. Fingerprint powder had not been wiped off quite well enough.

  Sail catnapped all night, sleeping no more than a half hour soundly at any one time. He spent long periods with a mirror which he rigged to look out of the companion without showing himself.

  On a big Matthews cruiser tied across the slip, somebody was ostensibly standing anchor watch. Boats lying at a slip do not usually stand on anchor. The watcher did not smoke and did not otherwise allow any light to get to his features. It was dark enough that he might have been tall or short, wide or narrow. The small things he did were what any man would do during a long, tiresome job, with one exception.

  He frequently put a finger deep in his mouth and felt around.

  Party fish boats making noise on their way out of Pier Five furnished Sail with an excuse to go on deck at about six bells. He stood there yawning, rubbing his head with his palms and making faces. He rubbed a finger across his chest and rolled up little twists and balls of dirt or old skin, after which he took a shower with the dock hose.

  The watcher was not around the Matthews in the morning sun. Sail went below to don a pair of black shorts which washing had faded.

  Sail’s dinky rode in stern davits, bugeye fashion, at enough of a tilt not to hold seas or spray, and Sail lowered it. He got a brush and the dock hose and washed down the topsides, taking off dried salt that seawater had deposited on the hull. He dropped his brush in the water three different times; it sank, and he had to reach under for it.

  The third time he reached under for the brush, he retrieved the stuff which the Greek’s clothing had yielded the night before. The articles had not worked out of the nook between the dock cross braces underwater where Sail had jammed them after swimming back from the island where he had taken the dead Greek.

  Sail finished washing down, hauled the dink up on the davits, and during the business of coiling the dock hose around the faucet in the middle of the dock, he worked his eyes. Any one of a dozen staring persons within view might have been the watcher from the Matthews. The other eleven would be tourists down for a gawk at the yachts.

  Sail took the Greek’s stuff out of the dink when he got the scrub brush. He went below. Picking the business cards apart was a job because they were soaked to pulp. He examined both sides of each card as he got it separated. One card said Captain Santorin Gura Andopolis of the yacht Athens Girl chartered for Gulf Stream fishing and that nobody caught more fish. The address was Pier Five. I live aboard, was written in pencil on the back.

  The other twenty-six cards said the Lignum Vitae Towing Company had a president named Captain Abel Dokomos. The address was on the Miami River, and there was a telephone number for after six.

  The piece of board was four by twenty by a quarter inches, mahogany, with screw holes in the four corners. Most of the varnish was gone, peeled rather than worn off, and so was some of the gold leaf. There were a letter and four figures in gold leaf: K9420.

  Sail burned all of the stuff in the galley Shipmate.

  A man was taking two slot machines away from the lunch stand as Sail passed on his way uptown. Later, he passed four places which had slot machines, and there was a pla
y around all of them. Sail loafed around each crowd, but not as if he wanted to. He walked off from one crowd, then came back. In all, he managed to play three machines. The third paid four nickels and he played two back without getting anything. The slot in a dial telephone got one of the surviving nickels.

  He told the operator he didn’t dial as a matter of principle and asked for Pier Five, and when he got Pier Five, asked for Captain Santorin Gura Andopolis of the Athens Girl. It took them five minutes to decide they couldn’t find Captain Andopolis.

  After the telephone clanked its metal throat around the fourth nickel, Sail repeated the refusal to dial and asked for the number of Captain Abel Dokomos’ Lignum Vitae Towing Company.

  When he heard the answer, he made his voice as different as he could. “Cap’n Abel handy?”

  “He hasn’t come down this morning. Anything we can do?”

  “Call later,” Sail said.

  The woman on the other end of the wire had been Blick’s sister Nola, visitor aboard Sail the night before.

  Sail selected a cafeteria which was a little overdone in chromium. The darkie who carried his tray got a dime. There was a small dab of oatmeal on the first chair Sail started to sit on. He broke his egg yolks and watched them run with an intent air. The fifth lump made his coffee cup overflow. He put almost a whole egg down with the first gulp from the force of habit of a man who eats his own cooking and eats it in solitude.

  A boy wandered among the tables, selling newspapers and racing tip sheets. He carried and sold more tip sheets than newspapers. Sail took the coffee slowly with the spoon, getting a little undissolved sugar out of the bottom of the cup with each spoonful, seeming to enjoy it. The sugar lumps were wrapped in paper carrying the cafeteria’s advertisement, and he unwrapped one and ate it after he finished everything before him. He put the papers in the coffee cup.

  The man in a stiff straw hat eating near the door did not put syrup or anything sweet on his pancakes or in his coffee. And when he finished eating, he poked the back of his cheek absently with a finger, then put the finger in the back of his mouth to feel.

  Sail got up and took a slow walk until he came to a U-Drive-It. There was a slot machine in the U-Drive-It. He tried it, and it paid off only in noise. He made a deposit and got a light six sedan. For three blocks, he drove slowly, looking out and appraising buildings for height. He picked one much taller than the others and parked in front of it. After starting into the building, he came back to look over an upright dingus, one of a row of the things along the curb. Small print said motorists could park there half an hour if they put a nickel in the dingus and turned the handle.

  “The whole town’s got it,” he complained, and shook the device to see if it would start working without a nickel. It wouldn’t and he put one in.

  He said loudly, just before entering one of the tall building elevators, “Five!”

  The fifth-floor corridor was not much different from other office building corridors. There were three real estate and one law office and some more.

  The man who had felt his bad tooth in the cafeteria came sneaking up the stairs from the fourth floor and put his head around the corner. Sail was set. The man’s straw hat sounded surprisingly like glass when it collapsed, and the man got down on all fours to mew in pain. Sail hit again, then unwrapped his belt from his fist. He blew on the fist, working the fingers.

  “I’ve got to rush my friend to a place for treatment,” he told the operator when the elevator cage came.

  He thanked the operator and half a dozen other volunteer assistants while he started the rented car. He drove past the U-Drive-It. The proprietor was fussing with his machine.

  Sail drove five or six miles by guess before he found a lonesome spot and got out. He hauled the man out. Sail’s breathing was regular and deeper than usual; his eyes were wide with excitement, and he perspired. He wiped his palms on his clerical black shorts and bent over his victim.

  The man with the bad tooth began big at the top and tapered. His small hands were callused, dirt was ground into the calluses, and the nails were broken. He had dark hair and a dark face, but got lighter as he went down, finishing off with feet in a pair of white shoes. He smelled a little as men smell who live on small boats with no baths.

  His pockets held three hundred in nothing smaller than tens, all new bills, in a plain envelope. There was a dollar sixty-one in silver mixed up with the cashier’s slip for his cafeteria breakfast. In ten or so minutes, he was scowling at Sail.

  He said something in Greek. It sounded like his personal opinion of Sail or the situation.

  Sail said, “Andopolis?”

  “You know my name, so whatcha askin’ for?” the man growled without much accent.

  “You’re here because I been getting too much attention,” Sail said. “That oughta be clear, hadn’t it?”

  Andopolis felt his head, that part of his cheek over his bad tooth, then got to his feet. Sail took his belt out of his pocket and started threading it through the loops. Andopolis clutched his head, groaned, started to sit down, but jumped at Sail instead. Sail moved to one side, but not enough, and Andopolis hit his shoulder and the impact turned him around and around. Andopolis hit him somewhere else, and the whole front of his body went numb and something against his back was the ground.

  “I’ll stomp ya!” Andopolis yelled.

  He jumped on Sail with both feet, and Sail was still numb enough to feel only the dull shock. His rounded body rolled under the impact, and Andopolis waved his arms to keep erect. Sail had his belt unthreaded. He laid it like a whip across Andopolis’ face. Andopolis grabbed his face, and was wide open when he sat down heavily beside Sail.

  When Andopolis came to, his wrists were fastened with the belt. Sail had his shirt unbuttoned and was examining the damage the other’s feet had done. There was one purple print of the entire bottom of Andopolis’ right foot, and a skinned patch where the other had slid off, with loosened skin tangled in the long golden hairs, but not much blood. He put back his head and shoulders and started to take a full breath, but broke it off in coughing. He sat down coughing, holding his chest, and sweated.

  “Yah!” Andopolis gloated. “I stomp your guts good if you don’t lay off me! What you been follerin’ me for?”

  Sail looked up sickly. “Followin’ you?”

  “Yah.”

  Sail, still sitting, said, “My Christian friend, you stood anchor watch on me last night. You haunted me this morning. But still I was following you, was I?”

  “Before that, I’m talk about,” Andopolis growled. “You follow me to Bimini in that black bugeye. I make the run from Bimini here yesterday. You make it too. What kinda blind fool you take me for? You followin’ me, and don’t you think I don’t know him.”

  “It must have been coincidence.”

  “Don’t feed me, mister.”

  “It just might be that nobody will have to feed you for long.”

  “Whatcha mean?”

  “You were walking down the dock toward my boat last night when Abel jumped you. You sort of ruined Abel, and I covered up for you, but that’s not the point. The point is, why were you coming to see me?”

  “Aw, hell, I was gonna tell you about followin’ me.”

  Sail coughed some, deep and low, trying to keep it from moving his ribs, then got up on his feet carefully.

  “All right, now we’re being honest with each other, and I’ll tell you a true story about a yacht named Lady Luck.”

  Andopolis crowded his lips into a bunch and pushed the bunch out as far as he could, but didn’t say anything.

  Sail said, “The Lady Luck, Department of Commerce registration number K9420. She belonged to Bill Lord of Tulsa. Oil. Out in Tulsa, they call Bill the Osage Magician on account of what he’s got that it seems to take to find oil. Missus Bill likes jewelry, and Bill likes her, so he buys her plenty. Because Missus Bill really likes her rocks, she carries them around with her. You following me?”

/>   Andopolis was. He still had his lips pooched.

  “Bill Lord had his Lady Luck anchored off the vet camp on Lower Matecumbe last November,” Sail continued. “Bill and the missus were ashore, looking over the camp. Bill was in the trenches himself, and is some kind of a shot with the American Legion and the Democrats, so he was interested. The missus left her pretties on the yacht. Remember that. Everybody has read about the hurricane that hit that afternoon, and maybe some noticed that Bill and his missus were among those who hung on behind that tank car. But the Lady Luck wasn’t so lucky, and she dragged her pick off somewhere and sank. For a while, nobody knew where.”

  Sail stopped to cough. He had to lie down on his back before he could stop, and he was very careful getting erect. Perspiration had most of him wet.

  “A couple of weeks ago, a guy asked the Department of Commerce lads to check and give him the name of the boat, and the owner, that carried number K9420,” Sail said, keeping his voice down now. “The word got to me. Never mind how. And it was easy to find you had had a fishing party down around the Matecumbes and Long Key a few days before you got curious about K9420. It was a little harder to locate your party. Two guys. They said you anchored off Lower Matecumbe to bottom-fish, and your anchor fouled something, and you had a time, and finally, when you got the anchor up, you brought aboard some bow planking off a sunken boat. From the strain, it was pretty evident the anchor had pulled this planking off the rest of the boat, which was still down there. You checked up as a matter of course to learn what boat you had found.”

  Andopolis looked as if more than his tooth hurt him.

  Sail kept his voice even lower to keep his ribs from moving.

  “Tough you didn’t get in touch with the insurance people instead of contacting Captain Abel Dokomos, a countryman who had a towing and salvage outfit and no rep to speak of. You needed help to get the Lady Luck. Cap Abel tried to make you cough up the exact location. You got scared and lit out for Bimini. You discovered I was following you, and that scared you back to Miami. You wanted a showdown, and when Cap Abel collared you on the dock as you were coming to see me, you took care of that part of your troubles with a knife. But that left Abel’s lady friend, or whatever she is, and her brother, Blick. They were in the know, too. They tried to grab you last night in the park after you fixed Abel up, and you outran them. Now, that’s a very complete story, or do you think?”