But she had her arms around him, her rich body close and clinging, when Gootsie Thomas walked in.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE squat man said nothing. He closed the door and looked at them, his face expressionless. Kari gave a small laugh and patted Cornell’s shoulder, started to delve for her lipstick, then shrugged and started for the door.
“Take care of yourself, Barney.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
She glanced curiously at Gootsie on the way out, but she said nothing more. The door closed softly behind her. Cornell sighed and looked at the squat man.
“All right, Gootsie.”
The man said, “I ought to hang one on your jaw.”
“It didn’t mean anything.”
“So you say.” Gootsie interrupted Cornell’s retort with a quick, angry gesture of his hamlike hand. “Shut up. Do you know where Sally is?”
Cornell stared. “Have you found her?”
“Nice you knew she was missing. I thought maybe you didn’t give much of a damn. You can’t find Sally, you find another dame, that’s all.”
Cornell said, “Take it easy.”
“I still ought to hang one on you.” The man trembled with anger. “If it wasn’t for Sally, I would.”
“Where is she?” Cornell asked.
“If you got the time to spare, I’ll show you.”
“Is she all right?”
“Come along and see.”
Abruptly Gootsie turned and quit the cabin. Cornell followed hard on his heels, crossing the road toward the rickety piers. There was some activity going on in the shed behind Kelly’s Bar, but none of the men loitering there spared them a second glance. It was getting cooler, and a small breeze kicked up white caps farther out on the darkening Chesapeake. From the west came a rumble of faint thunder.
Gootsie didn’t pause at the dock. Instead, he struck off along a footpath that plunged into the underbrush. Cornell followed without question, respecting Gootsie’s anger. He only hoped Sally hadn’t been harmed in any way. The thought made a tight knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.
The devious path led inland for a quarter of a mile, then turned back along the bank of a deep salt-water creek. At the last turn, a small red shack and a newly built pier came into view. Gootsie’s boat was moored to the pier. It was a secluded spot, with a waste of marshland to the north and a small wooded promontory to the south. Probably there weren’t too many who knew about Gootsie’s place, he decided.
His brief hope that Sally was here was lost when Gootsie ignored the neat little cabin. Instead, he turned toward the boat at the pier.
“Isn’t Sally here?” Cornell asked.
“No.”
“Don’t you think you ought to tell me what this is all about?”
Gootsie was rummaging under the bow seat. He came up with two guns in his hand. His eyes were thoughtful, studying Cornell’s tall figure. The guns were .38’s gleaming with fresh oil. The cylinders clicked smoothly when Gootsie spun them with his thumb. Finally he handed one to Cornell.
“We got trouble,” Gootsie said. “I guess there’s no point in you and me getting fouled up now.”
Cornell took the gun. “What kind of trouble?”
“Just plenty of it. Can you use this thing?”
“If it’s loaded.”
“I’ve got slugs,” Gootsie said.
Cornell took the handful of cartridges Gootsie gave him and watched the squat man load the gun he had kept for himself.
“Have the cops picked up Sally?” he asked.
“The cops didn’t get her,” Gootsie said. “Sam Hand did.”
“Hand?”
“She’s on the Stone cruiser. He got her aboard somehow. Don’t ask me how. Then he sent one of his boys to tell me about it. He says if you want Sally back safe and sound, you’ll come to a conference with him.”
“Where?” Cornell asked.
“On the Buccaneer. That’s the cruiser.” Gootsie shoved his gun into a back pocket. “We meet them off Bancroft Point when it gets dark. That’s twenty miles down the bay. Sally is supposed to be on the boat when we get there. You got any idea of what Sam Hand wants from you?”
“Whatever it is, I don’t have it,” Cornell said. “Will we need the guns?”
Gootsie grinned. “How well do you know Sam Hand?”
“Not very well.”
“I know the son of a bitch from way back,” Gootsie said. “If you want Sally to come ashore with us, you got to figure on the guns. That’s a language Sam Hand understands.”
“All right,” Cornell said. “Let’s get going.”
The hours until dusk were endless. For long minutes Gootsie kept the boat hidden in the reeds inshore, whenever a boat passed within hailing distance. No one saw them. When they were five miles below Calvert Beach, Gootsie quit hiding and hit full throttle on the outboard.
Darkness found them nosing through the marsh inlets again, a mile from the meeting place. There was no moon. The thunder was clear now, rolling like the drums of a symphony over the ominously slick waters of the Chesapeake. Cornell leaned forward in the bow, trying to see through the darkening waters. In a matter of minutes the night was complete, black and smelling of the salt sea carried past them on the tide, full of the sounds of night birds and the dry clacking of the reeds in the wind that sprang up from nowhere.
Gootsie was a patient shadow behind him.
“I don’t see anything,” Cornell said.
He heard nothing. There was the thunder and the night sounds of marsh and water. Nothing else.
“Are you sure you got the message straight?” he asked.
Gootsie didn’t answer.
Lightning lit up the broad expanse of the bay. A glimmer of white shone on the swift-running tidal water and was gone. Gootsie slipped oars between the tholepins. Thunder crashed, and in the silence afterward Cornell heard the throb of diesels. A light gleamed in the blackness and went out. It gleamed again. Gootsie started to row.
Cornell peered at the luminous hands of his watch. It could be a trap; the cruiser could be loaded with cops. They were an hour early, which was good. He understood why the outboard was silent, why Gootsie used the oars with such care.
After a time, the rakish white hull of the cruiser loomed out of the blackness, rolling restlessly. Light shone from her cabin ports. There was a flash of brilliant blue overhead, and for a moment Cornell could see the whole scene clearly, the broad transom of the Buccaneer turned toward them, the two men on the bow, the third on the bridge. Gootsie stopped rowing. The darkness came back swiftly, darker than before. No light stabbed the night toward them. They hadn’t been seen. Not yet.
The tide carried them drifting toward the stern. Time was with them, the fact that they were an hour early. The men on deck were not keeping a sharp lookout yet. The wind and the storm and the moonless night were with them, too. Their small boat pitched and lurched with the cross tide, coming down on the larger craft.
Cornell fended them off the stern with his hand. He could hear the crackle of a radio on board. There was a faint scraping sound as their boat slid across the cruiser’s transom, lost in the slap of water and the mutter of wind through the boat’s upper housing. Cornell took the gun from his pocket and reached up for a grip on the rail. He waited until the swell lifted the small boat high, then quickly stepped aboard. A cigarette glowed near the bow. The radio music sounded louder. He turned and caught Gootsie’s groping hand. In a moment the squat man was beside him, fastening the painter to the rail.
Another flare of lightning showed them to the cabin door. The thunder made Cornell’s ears ring. There was a narrow ladder going up to the top deck. Cornell tried the door handle, pushed it open—and someone said:
“Hey, what—”
Cornell smashed at the man’s face with his gun. There was a strangled sound of pain, and Gootsie moved behind him, as fluid as a striking snake. Cornell caught the crewman before his unconscious body
hit the deck, and lowered him carefully. Footsteps moved without decision on the deck above. A voice hailed softly:
“Lennie?”
Gootsie sighed. Cornell touched his arm.
“Lennie?”
They stepped into the cabin, and Cornell deliberately slammed the narrow door, hoping it would make the man think Lennie had gone below, out of reach.
There were stateroom doors to right and left, and ahead, an archway gave him a view of the lighted salon. The cruiser lifted on a larger swell than usual. She was not at anchor. The deck throbbed underfoot to the idling pulse of her diesels. Ice cubes clinked in the large cabin ahead. The radio music came from there. Cornell looked at Gootsie and saw the man’s tight mouth. He nodded. Gootsie’s expression did not change. He went ahead.
Sam Hand had his back to him when he stepped into the cabin, gun in hand. The big man was at a bar, pouring rye from a cut-glass decanter. The salon extended the entire beam of the vessel, and was furnished with comfortable leather seats, a round dining table of mahogany, and paneled bulkheads to which were fastened a number of marine oils, and, over the bar where Hand stood, a portrait of Jason Stone. Hand was not alone in the room. Sally Smith, small and huddled on the couch nearby, had her legs tucked under her. There were dark smudges under her eyes. She looked at Cornell and Gootsie for an incredible moment, not moving, her eyes wide with disbelief. She started to move, straightening her legs, her mouth open, then closing tightly at Cornell’s abrupt gesture. She smiled. Her face no longer looked pinched.
Sam Hand turned and saw them standing there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SOME of the color drained from the burly man’s face, but he smiled. There was no fear in the hard, tough eyes that touched Cornell and then Gootsie, and then slid sidewise to the girl. No one else was in the cabin. Cornell moved his head toward the corridor behind them and said, “Watch, Gootsie.”
“Check.”
“Well,” Hand said. “A commando raid?”
“Something like that,” Cornell nodded. He looked at Sally. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, Barney. Yes.”
Glass in hand, the big man shrugged and moved away from the bar, his fingers on the wall. Cornell’s voice cut him sharply. “You’ll ring that bell only once. After that, you get a slug in your wrist.”
Hand said, “Now don’t be a fool.”
“Shut up,” Cornell said. He looked at Sally again. “Sure?”
“Yes, Barney. He didn’t hurt me.”
“That’s good for him. That saves his neck.”
Sam Hand said throatily, “You can’t get away with this. I’ve got six men aboard with me.”
“They don’t know I’m here,” Cornell said.
“You won’t get off as easily as you came aboard!”
“We’ll see,” Cornell said.
Hand’s bald, tanned pate gleamed in the light hanging from the overhead. His dark brows winged up, eying Cornell and Sally. He looked bigger than Cornell remembered, his meaty shoulders filling his light tweed jacket. A pale yellow silk shirt billowed loosely over his broad chest; an onyx ring winked as he lifted his glass and took a long swallow.
“Well,” he said, “what now?”
“You wanted to see me,” Cornell said. “You snatched Sally to make sure I’d come here.”
“Sally, yes. It was quite a shock, seeing her in the village this afternoon. I’d almost forgotten about her father, Tim Smith. An unfortunate affair. You won’t believe me when I say I tried to intercede with Jay about him. But you may understand that Stone was not a man easily swayed from destroying his enemies.”
Sally said tightly, “You’re no different, Mr. Hand.”
The bald man chuckled easily. “Perhaps not. Stone always had money and power. His object was to get more of the same. On the other hand, I was brought up in slums, nurtured on food I had to beg or steal, and picked my education from the gutter, you might say. I haven’t done too badly. It wasn’t easy for me to work for Stone. But that problem, happily, has at last been solved.” He looked at Cornell and smiled. “You solved it for me.”
“That won’t work,” Cornell said. “I didn’t kill him.”
“But the police think otherwise.”
Cornell said, “And what do you think?”
“I don’t know for certain who murdered Jay. I’m not really concerned, now that the happy deed is done. But I am concerned for my own neck, of course.”
“You were with him last night,” Cornell said.
Hand was surprised. “What makes you think so?”
“I have two witnesses who saw you at Overlook.”
Hand said softly, “Good for you. You are a little tougher than I expected. More than a little. I had no hope you would evade the police this long. That takes a certain courage and intelligence, Mr. Cornell. Who are the witnesses?”
“You’ll learn in time,” Cornell said. “In court.”
“That won’t be necessary. You and I can reach an understanding. You’re the sort of man I can do business with, to our mutual advantage. Please put away your gun.”
The man’s grating voice carried conviction. He came nearer, and Cornell saw the broad freckles, some as big as a half dollar, that marred the smooth tan of his scalp. Smaller freckles blotched his hard face. Cornell lifted the gun a little.
“That’s enough.”
“There is really no need to—”
“I know your methods, Sam,” Cornell said. “I don’t know what you really want, but you’ll tell me soon. And after that, no matter what answer I’ve given you, I want out. I’ve been pushed around a lot lately. By everybody. And I’m tired of it.”
“Good for you,” Hand said softly.
“But not good for you. If my answer doesn’t satisfy you, Sam, you won’t let me get ashore, and I don’t like to think of what will happen to Sally.”
“Sally will be all right,” Hand said. “Sally is a nice kid. She pretended she never heard of you, and she didn’t want to tell me where you were at first. But she told me, finally.”
Cornell looked at the girl’s pale face. “Sally?”
“He didn’t hurt me, Barney. He wants to make a deal. I couldn’t see any way out, except to tell him to give Gootsie a message. He wanted more, but that’s all I told him,”
Sam Hand said, “You see?” He spread his big hands in a placating gesture. “We can get along.”
Cornell said, “We’re going ashore. Right now.”
Hand said, “I haven’t asked you the question yet. You seem to know what I’m going to ask, and I like that. I need men like you, Cornell.”
“What for?”
“To take over where Stone left off.”
“No,” Cornell said.
“Yes.”
Cornell said, “Stone is dead, and what he tried to do is dead. It doesn’t belong in this country. It’s been tried before. Bribery and beating and blackmail, all for power. Let it stay dead.”
“No. I’m taking over,” Hand said. “I know Stone’s plans from A to Z. I’ve got ideas of my own. I’ve got his money. He kept a lot of cash around, and I know where it is, and I’m keeping it. There’s just one thing I don’t have, Cornell, and you’re the boy who’s going to give it to me.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Cornell said.
“Look.” Hand’s voice was coaxing. “You’re in a bad spot. If you get killed, nobody mourns for you. They’ve got you trapped for killing Stone. So maybe you didn’t do it. Neither did I, and it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. But somebody came to Overlook last night and did the job—and more. Somebody got Jay’s private files.”
“They’re important?” Cornell asked.
“Jay was crazy to bring ’em down here. He said he wanted to collate ’em. He had new names, new data he wanted to organize for the next step. We argued about taking them out of the safe in town. I told him something would happen. He got himself killed, and the killer got the papers.”
“What names and what data?” Cornell asked.
Hand’s hard eyes touched the gun Cornell held, and slid to Sally again. She sat forward on the couch, her face white and strained. The cruiser pitched awkwardly in the rising swell. In the silence, thunder crashed overhead. Footsteps moved on the deck over the cabin, hurrying astern. Cornell spared a quick glance at the corridor. Gootsie’s shadow bulked near the door.
“What names?” he asked again.
Hand was listening to the footsteps overhead. Another man had joined the first. He smiled, his mouth wide and thin like a frog’s. His face hardened.
“It’s not important now,” he said softly. “My men have found your boat. You haven’t got a chance. I want those papers. I don’t expect you have them with you. Just tell me where they are.”
Cornell said, “Gootsie?”
There was no answer. He looked at Hand.
“And if I don’t tell you?”
“I can make you talk. Don’t be a fool.”
Cornell said, “I don’t have them, you know.”
“I expected you to say that. I’ll get the truth from you later. Put down your gun.”
Cornell spoke to Sally. “Come here. Beside me.” The girl circled toward him, and he looked at Hand. “We’re leaving. You’re going to tell your men to leave us alone. I haven’t anything to lose. I might as well hang for your murder as well as Stone’s.”
“You wouldn’t use that gun.”
“Try me,” Cornell said.
The bald man hesitated, then shrugged. Someone shouted on the deck above. The cruiser lurched, rose and fell. Cornell drew Sally behind him. She was shivering.
“Barney, you—”
“It will be all right. Let’s go, Sam.”
Hand moved past them into the corridor. Gootsie was there. The man’s face was white. He said, “We can’t get out.”
“Hand will get us out,” Cornell said.
“The whole crew is out there. I bolted the door. They found the guy you slugged. They’ve got my boat.”
“Hand will tell them to let us go ashore.” Cornell looked at the bald man. “Can you swim, Sam?”
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