I had my .38 and a flashlight, but I wanted to use the flashlight as little as possible, and the revolver not at all. There was a chance there were no other men on the island, but I couldn't be sure. Jim had tried to hit the shore about where I'd been this afternoon, and I found the spot, using the flash briefly, in five minutes. Then I headed in, hoping I could find that tree. As I walked, I stirred up crowds of gulls. They burst up in front of me with sudden startled cries. They were ghostly shapes, insubstantial in the thin moonlight. I kept walking, looking . . . .
I had been looking for an hour. Once I retraced my steps to the spot from which I'd started, and now I knew I should be somewhere near the tree. I stopped being careful; if anybody else were out here, there'd have been trouble before now. I turned the flash on and left it on. In ten minutes I found the tree. My light picked out the three strangely twisted limbs near its top. I found the mark I'd scratched in its side. I put my back to the mark and walked forward twenty steps. I bent down and began to scoop out a hole.
I dug down a couple of feet. I found nothing.
Hell, twenty paces was quite a distance. I might be off a foot or two. I kept scooping and shoveling with my hands, working outward in a circle from the spot where I'd started, working faster, perspiration beginning to come out on my forehead and on my chest. The thought of what it would mean if one of Torelli's men had found the box, perhaps even while I was putting on my biggest act for Torelli himself, was swelling in my mind.
My hand brushed something, struck something solid. I grabbed it, pulled it out, and turned the flash full on it.
It was there. The black box.
And that was it; all over. The rest was easy.
22
HOT SUN burned against the sand and sparkled on the blue waters of Acapulco Bay. I was having another coco fizz in another enormous coconut, not at Las Américas this time, but under the thatched roof of the Club Copacabana, almost at the edge of the surf on lovely Copacabana Beach.
I still ached—it had been only two days since I dug up the black box—but I felt good just the same. And, finally, I felt clean. I had soaked three times in hot tubs and taken eight showers. And the best part was that I had walked openly around town, into and out of hotels, and nobody had killed me. Apparently Torelli and I had our truce, and it appeared I'd stay alive a while longer.
Getting the real black box, the blackmail file, and conning Torelli had been the big parts. After that it had been simple. I'd looked the stuff over in another dingy hotel room: a pile of papers and photostats and photos like those Joe had sent me, only the real thing this time. It was all that Joe had said and more: a complete file on his movements for nearly two months; pictures of Lila and the cute, pudgy baby; some other pictures of Joe and Lila that weren't so cute; proof of union crooked work and fund stealing and even some rather peculiar strike negotiations and odd union assessments that Joe hadn't mentioned.
And the War Department documents. It hadn't been too clear to me, even though I'd held it in my hands, but it was a list of guided-missile bases all over the world, top-secret bases, some of them known to our allies and some known only to a select few in the United States government. There'd been a lot of words and figures and calculations and peculiar symbols in the document that meant nothing to me but would have meant a great deal to men who could understand them.
And I'd managed to listen to the tape recording, almost an hour of it: seven Communist union chiefs discussing which strikes in which defense plants should be called first; which unions—important in the nation but not yet sufficiently sprinkled with Communists who would vote and strike and picket and sabotage in accordance with the party's instructions—should be given more vigorous attention. A lot of it. I listened carefully to it all with Dugan.
I'd had to call L.A. again, and they didn't tell me where Dugan was, but I told them the name of the dump in which I was then staying, and in an hour he showed up. I gave him everything, all the papers, told him the blow-by-blow story. He was on his way back to L.A. with the stuff now. As for my client, I'd told Joe what to expect if I learned he wasn't all that he should be. He wasn't all that he should be. And I didn't even have to inform him that the case was over; the FBI was going to take care of that.
I wiggled my bare toes in the cool sand beneath my table. I'd been wanting to do that for a long time. I finished my coco fizz and ordered another. So far I was alone, but I'd made a phone call and would soon have company.
Gloria was free of Sudden Death Madison now, I was thinking, since his sudden death. She and I had several things to talk over. And there was other unfinished business here in Acapulco, too. I hadn't even settled my Las Américas bill, and I still owed Rafael that hundred bucks. Ah, well, mañana.
I had enough money to take care of almost anything that might come up. Part of my walking around town had included going into the Banco Nacional de Méjico, a couple of blocks from the Zócalo, and having my $50,000 transferred here. It came to 432,000 pesos, which would buy a lot of coco fizzes.
I kept looking out the entrance toward the street. She hadn't come in sight yet. I had on my passionflower trunks; maybe we'd have a swim after a while. I wouldn't mind staying here all afternoon, like a man living in a tropical shack on a tropical beach. Tonight, when the orchestra started playing, we could go dancing barefooted in the surf. I felt wonderful and relaxed and good; I was looking forward to tomorrow again.
At least, I felt good about tomorrow as far as I, personally, was concerned. I didn't feel so good about Torelli and the syndicate and the Mafia and the Communists and unions and all the rest. I thought with a very real hate about Vincente Torelli, probably heading back to Italy now. I'd seen his big, white, half-million-dollar yacht, the Fortuna, sailing out of the harbor earlier today. Torelli was still alive and still making plans.
At least, my specific part of the case was over. I'd messed up part of the gangster's union deal, their projected stranglehold, but it was only one small part, and I knew the mobsters would be busy doing the work that Torelli and others had outlined for the underlings, and for themselves. The mobs had a big foot in the union door now, and I hadn't kicked the foot out all by myself, not by a long shot. The racket boys would be active, trying to ease the rest of the way in. Maybe they'd make it; the same thing, on a smaller scale, had been going on for a long time and nobody had stopped it yet.
The hell with it. I'd had enough for a while; somebody else could take over from here. Me? I was taking a vacation in Acapulco. I had 432,000 pesos, a coco fizz, my evil trunks, and my toes curling in the sand.
And here she came now, to make it perfect. I'd told her to wear her swimsuit, and she walked toward me now, hips swinging, full breasts barely concealed by the bandanna floating upon them. I couldn't help thinking that this was almost the same way it had started four days ago.
Only, of course, this time it was María.
THE END
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook 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 © 1952 by Richard Prather
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ISBN 978-1-4804-9902-7
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Darling, It's Death Page 16
