He slumped against me as about three of the guys half a dozen feet away let out startled yells, and I slipped my left arm under his shoulders and around his back and hugged him to me as if we were going dancing. The checked butt of the automatic was solid in my right fist. I slipped my finger around the trigger and yelled at the others, who were just now starting toward me. "Get back or—"
I didn't finish it because one of the men had been standing all this time with a gun in his hand, and he was hunching downward into a slight crouch now and jerking the gun up toward me. I guess he didn't care if he shot Rough Voice in the back, so long as he got a piece of me.
I pulled the trigger of my gun three times as fast as I could, aiming awkwardly around Rough Voice's limp arm and hoping that one of the slugs would get the guy. Two of them did. One spun him around and the other one slammed into him somewhere and he went down five feet back of where he'd been standing when I blasted him.
That slowed the others. Only one of them had a gun in his fist, and it was pointed toward the ground halfway between him and me.
"That's enough," I snapped. "Drop it. Drop it fast!" I pointed the gun at him, and he dropped it. The rest were hesitant, shaken by the suddenness of what had happened, and I backed away from them. My feet went into the water. I kept backing up until the water was around my hips, keeping the automatic trained on the hoods ashore, then I yelled at them, "Run, you bastards. Run!" With the last word I started pulling the trigger. I aimed over their heads and emptied the clip as they yelped and scattered in every direction except at me.
I dropped Rough Voice in the water, threw the automatic after the disappearing hoods, and started splashing out to sea.
And here came María.
There should have been a band playing. Zip, swoop, and there she was. The boat slowed down and she settled into the water a few feet from me.
"Here," she gasped. It seemed like a strange thing to be doing, but I took the water ski she was shoving at me. I grabbed it tight with both hands and hung on as the boat accelerated, and before I knew it I was going like a porpoise. For a little while I was on top of the water and then I started down like a whale sounding. I thought I was going to hit the ocean bottom when I bobbed up again. It was rough, but I was getting away. It occurred to me that I was a fortunate fellow. Yes, I was fortunate indeed. Wasn't I water-skiing at Acapulco?
19
IN THE BOAT, after our first babbling bits of what was, for all practical purposes, completely unintelligible conversation, I grabbed María and gave her a very wild kiss. She had got back into the clothes she'd been wearing when I'd left her at the dock, so the kiss was not as wild as it might otherwise have been, but it was quite satisfactory anyway.
A guy about forty in a yachting cap, blue coat, and white ducks was at the wheel, politely ignoring us. We sat together in the seat behind him.
I said to María, "How did all this come about? I'm just now realizing that it's real."
She smiled at me, blinking her brown eyes. Her dark hair was plastered down on her head, sopping wet and almost black. She said, "I saw all those horrible men come to the dock and get a boat, and I knew who they were from what you'd told me—and the way they looked. I was frantic. I finally hired a boat." She nodded toward the yachting cap. "I mean, I didn't really hire it; Jim's an old friend of mine. I went to see him, and then we came out here." She smiled happily. "And here I am."
"And there you were," I said. "In the flesh. That was perfect, really. It took all the attention off me, every bit of it. But how in the name of sanity did you happen to think of that?"
She laughed. "I thought of the water skis before we even left. I figured those men might be suspicious of a boat just coming around, but I thought they might be less suspicious if it looked like somebody just water-skiing. I was going skiing with my street clothes on—I thought that might be surprising. And then right at the last moment, after we saw you and the boats on shore, I thought of the . . . the other." She chuckled. "I thought people might look at me, and maybe you could run."
People might look at me, she said. That was possibly the greatest understatement I had ever heard. I kissed her again.
She laughed, then frowned slightly. "Did you get . . ."
I shook my head. That started me thinking again. We still weren't very far from the island, and looking back, I could see the boats and the tiny figures of the men on the shore. Nobody had taken off after us yet. Probably they were more interested in the papers than in me. And they'd had to fish Rough Voice out of the water.
I had a small idea.
I told María about it and she gave directions to Jim, the pilot. We turned around and headed back.
The boat in which I'd gone to the island looked like a faster job than the hoodlums', and the one we were now in was even speedier than mine, so I figured if it came to a chase we'd have little trouble. And we weren't heading back to the big island anyway, but to the smaller one three or four hundred yards from it. I wanted the goons to see me, and I hoped the guy who'd been wearing the field glasses would use them.
We skirted the small island, watching the big one, but didn't see any boats take off. We grounded, and I jumped out and ran ashore into a cloud of sea gulls. It was a shame after I'd had my bath in the ocean. These birds must have been drinking Mexican tap water, and a little of the stuff goes a long way. Especially out here. These birds were sick. But I kept going till I was hidden from view, and looked around. I found a few dead limbs and broke half a dozen foot-long sticks from them, took off my shirt, and wrapped the sticks in it. While I was at it I picked up a handful of this Gull Island and shoved it in my pants pocket, then ran back to the boat, carrying the bundle in front of me. It wasn't much of a play, but if the goon was using his field glasses he might start wondering. They knew they were looking for a package or box, but they couldn't know for sure what island it was on. A whole flock of men, digging up the big island and looking around, might find the black box I'd buried, but if I could divert any attention at all to this island it would help a little.
I got in the boat and we shoved off.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon when María and I got out of the boat on a strip of deserted beach. On the way in, María had explained that the pilot was an old friend of hers whom she'd known when she'd appeared in the Acapulco clubs previously. By the time we hit the beach we were all old friends. The guy took off, and María and I walked through the sand toward the road.
"Where do we go now, Shell?" she asked.
"We?"
"We." She nodded her head firmly.
"To the Gangrene Hotel. It seems as safe as anyplace."
Getting there wasn't any trouble. María's car was still down at Jim's dock, where she'd left it, so we hailed a taxi, which took us to within three blocks of the Del Mar. From there we walked. On the way I checked half a dozen little stores before I found what I wanted. And what I wanted I stole. I didn't buy because I didn't care to have anyone later saying he'd seen a sloppy, beat-up dirty man—obviously Shell Scott—getting the stuff. Nor did I want anyone remembering that María had bought the stuff. The black case was toughest, but I found a secondhand one in a dingy shop tended only by a sleepy old man to whom María talked while I did the shoplifting. It wasn't exactly like Eve's, but it was black and about the same size. The third place I tried, I found and stole a small reddish stick of sealing wax, and I bought a newspaper at a small farmacia and wrapped everything up in it.
When we reached the hotel, I was about ready to go. I picked up the key and walked with María to Room 10, thinking that the place sure did smell good. When we went inside, I started thinking other thoughts.
The big revolver in the guy's hand was pointed about at my navel, and it was held very steady. He was a man about my age, and presentable enough, except for the revolver.
I kicked the door shut.
"You John B. Smith?" he said
"Yeah. Who won the election?"
"Costello."<
br />
"Hell, man," I said. "You really gave me a scare there for a minute. I didn't expect you in my room."
He grinned and put the gun away. "There it is." He nodded toward the chair in the corner, and the new briefcase on its seat. He walked over to me. "I bribed the clerk to let me in." He looked at María. "I didn't expect a girl."
"It's not what you think," I said. "If I explained, you'd never believe me. Never. And thanks, pal."
"It's OK. I'm being well paid."
He shook my hand and left, but before he took off I made a deal with him for his revolver. He wouldn't need it now that he'd got rid of the briefcase, and I would. There was no trouble. Joe had told him to cooperate in every way.
After he'd gone, María said, "What was that business all about?"
"I'll show you, honey. You've earned anything you want." I got the briefcase from the chair and opened it on the bed. Joe had done a good, fast job. Everything seemed to be here, and it all looked authentic and right. There was the dope about Lila and Joe's past Communist record—I'd told him that would have to be included. And there was a stack of affidavits, photos, reports, photostats, a whole pile of stuff, including a spool of tape. It looked good, but everything except the dope on Lila and the Commies was faked. None of it would put a real squeeze on Joe or anybody else.
"This is what everybody's looking for," I told María.
She looked puzzled. She already knew about the blackmail file, so I went on, "At least, this is the Shell Scott version of what everybody's looking for. Watch."
I spread my stuff on the bed: black case, sealing wax, the fake papers, Eve Wilson's signet ring—thank God those goons hadn't got around to searching me—and a box of matches. I crowded all the fakes into the box, shut and locked it, and dirtied it up a little with dirt and the part of Gull Islands still in my pocket. Then I dipped sealing wax over the lock till a big gob was built up on it. I let it cool a little, then pressed the signet ring into the wax. When I got through, the black case was full, locked, and sealed, and there was a crisp "E" in the wax over the lock. I let it cool some more, turned the box upside down, and shook it. It was OK. The seal stayed in place. I cleaned off the ring, stuck it back in my pocket, then checked the revolver I'd just got. There were five cartridges in the chambers. I was just about ready.
María said, "I don't quite understand."
I grinned at her, although I didn't feel much like grinning. "Well," I said, "with any luck, that black box there is what you saw me run onto the little island and get a couple of hours ago."
"But you got a bunch of sticks."
"Uh-huh. But if Torelli's men over on the big island saw me, they don't know I got sticks." I pointed at the box. "That's what I got."
She understood it all at once and gasped. There wasn't a gasp left in me. If a rumor that I had the box of papers reached Torelli, then the word would go out, even bigger than the word that was out already: Get Shell Scott. Every hood in Acapulco, every big-time hood in the world would be looking for me like crazy. I would be, to Torelli and his clan, more important than Joe Stalin or J. Edgar Hoover.
I had to do it this way; at least, my battered brain couldn't think of any other way out. Otherwise I had to either forget about getting the real papers at all or else plan to get the real stuff and then get killed. Because if I got them, and Torelli knew I'd beaten him out of them, then naturally he'd kill me. What it boiled down to was that I couldn't run, not from the Mafia and the syndicate and the international network of blackmailers and murderers and fast-buck artists. Not as long as the only place I could run to was the world. I was understandably willing to go to a little trouble if it saved my life.
So, before long, I was going to let Torelli learn that the black box he wanted was here in this room. All Torelli knew was that Gunner had been bringing him some stuff that looked like the junk I'd put in the box. He'd never seen the real papers. As far as I knew, except for Joe, only Gunner and Eve had seen them. They were both dead. And, too, I'd planted with Archie the possibility that Gunner might have been trying to con Torelli; I hoped Archie had asked around a little. He probably had. Well, there on my bed were the papers Gunner had been trying to con Torelli with.
It was important that I didn't let Torelli get the papers too easily; if he had to work for them, he'd be more likely to assume automatically that they were what he'd been after. I had to set this up, build a frame around it to make it look good. Maybe as Gunner would have done it—and the fact that Gunner was a con man was what had given me this idea in the first place.
A confidence man, when he's taking a sucker, will often go to almost as much trouble as the producer of a Broadway play. In the "rag," for example, the con man takes the eager sucker to a brokerage office. It's a complete broker's office, the same as any real one—except that it's fake. Other con men and their criminal friends watch the fake tickers and the stock board, and win and lose thousands of dollars on the "market"; hoodlum clerks bustle around; honest-looking criminals make large investments; figures go up on the board; cashiers pay off huge sums of money, which the sucker eyes hungrily. The beauty of it is that the mark usually doesn't know he's been taken even after he drops his fifty thousand or hundred thousand or whatever it is. Usually for the con to work well, the con man must have an eager sucker as well as the props.
In the little con game I was dreaming up, I was the con man and Torelli was the eager sucker. Anyway, I hoped he was; at least he was eager. If I were lucky, he'd get these papers, find out later they were fakes, but knowing Gunner and the con game, feel that Gunner had been trying to con him from the beginning. Anyway, he'd stop looking for the real ones.
This dingy hotel room and the black box were my props, but I had to dress them up a little. I had to put on a little play for Torelli—maybe have a murder. A cold-blooded murder should make it more impressive, more "real." So I needed an actor who'd get himself killed to help me put my con across. I needed a candidate for a corpse. I had thought quite a bit about it, and my candidate was Abel Samuels, the Joker.
The Joker would do fine. He had my gun; he'd been the brain behind the cute trick of tossing me in the drink after he sapped me and banged my head; he was the boy who'd first hauled me face to face with Vincente Torelli; he was the one who'd piled into me after I left the dead Eve Wilson. And the Joker had naturally called Torelli after that, thus being largely responsible for my party with the six goons earlier this afternoon. There were plenty of reasons besides all the murders the Joker had never paid for.
And in another way, it was perfect. He liked a good practical joke, and this one was a beauty—and about as practical as they come. The only trouble was that this joke was on him.
So it was all settled. The only thing I had to do now was to find the Joker, and then convince him, one way or another, that he should tag along with me. It seemed highly probable that he would object.
"María," I said, "much as I love your lovely company, and much as you've done for me, I think you'd better clear out. There's going to be a big fuss here in about an hour. I've got a little errand to run right now, then I'm coming back here. You better scat and meet me someplace later."
She was frowning, looking at the black box. "Shell, I think I get it, but what's the wax and all for?"
"Sealing wax? If Torelli gets his hands on the box, and he's in the right mood, I'm hoping he'll be more likely to figure, because it's sealed, that the stuff in there is the McCoy—just as Eve sealed it up."
"But why the ring business? That 'E'?"
"That's one of the nicest gimmicks, honey. The way it'll look to him, Eve sealed the thing up, jammed her ring into it so she'd later know it had never been opened, and buried it. Then I dug it up. And it obviously still hasn't been opened. Neat, huh? I even used her own ring."
She was still frowning.
I said, "See, the hoods killed her. Obviously they won't want to leave her body there in the cottage, so as soon as it gets dark—" I glanced out the window; it
was dark already. "Well, along about now, they'll haul her out of the cottage and dump her someplace. First they'll strip her of anything that might help identify her, and when they find the ring they'll know about it even if they don't take it . . . to. . . Torelli. Oh, my God!"
Oh, boy, I was being smart. I figured everything out. Everything's fine. Great. I had the damn ring in my pocket.
The ring bit wasn't the most important part of my plan, but it was supposed to be a big help in convincing Torelli he had the McCoy—and I needed every bit of help I could get. Now I had to go back to El Encantado, and if Eve were still there, slip the ring back on her stiff, cold finger.
20
I CROUCHED in the half shelter of some bushes fifty feet from Cottage 6, wondering if Eve's body were still inside or if the boys had already come to cart her away. I knew that if they hadn't yet come, they would soon.
I'd grabbed María's hand and hustled her out of the hotel, put her in a taxi, then found an unlocked Chevy, crossed the ignition wires, and borrowed the car. I didn't want cab drivers hauling me around, and I'd need the buggy later anyway, for the Joker, if I lived. The car was parked down the road from the hotel, and I'd walked from it to here with no trouble. There was only fifty feet more to go, and I couldn't wait any longer.
Right now there were probably innumerable hoodlums digging up the big island and perhaps the small one near it—every one of the six islands, for all I knew. I did know that even aside from the chance that the real box might soon be found, I was getting close to the end of this mess, one way or another.
There was an urgency inside me, a need to hurry, but my feet dragged as I bent over and crept toward the side of the cottage. I had waited three or four minutes, so I was reasonably sure no men were inside doing their grisly job; they'd have come out with her by now. But I still didn't like going in there.
Darling, It's Death Page 14
