I was on an unlighted but paved road that dead-ended seventy-five yards away in a tangled mass of bushes. Enormous trees shaded the road and blocked off what little moonlight was available. As my eyes adjusted I could make out vacant lots ahead of me on the right, and the shadowy hulks of at least a couple of houses partially hidden by hedges and bushes on the left. Glints of light were visible here and there.
My heart pounding, I slowly pushed the motorcycle down to the end of the road. I turned it around and came back the same way, this time peering cautiously into the inhabited grounds, ready to flee at the tiniest provocation.
The first house was set well back from the road and the only light appeared to be the soft flicker cast by a television set. There was a Hobie Cat sailboat sitting in the front yard. It didn’t ring quite right, so I moved on.
The next house had been recently built, and the plantings hadn’t as yet grown much. A low wire fence ran along the road, and behind that a scraggly hibiscus hedge. I poked my head into a gap, and through an open window found myself looking almost directly into a well-lighted dining room.
There was a roar of laughter and Jérôme Baudchon, the largest and darkest of the three paras, leaned forward at the table to pour wine for someone out of sight to my left. Facing him at the table, so that all I could see of his head was his cropped white hair, was Yves-Louis Buisson. I watched for another thirty second and heard only the muffled din of half a dozen voices in high spirits. The paras were having a party.
I pushed the motorcycle a few more yards and looked in the driveway. Sure enough. There were three cars parked beyond the closed gate.
I’d seen everything I needed to.
More quickly now, I shoved the hog to the end of the road, fired up the boiler, and was off again through the night.
On one end of Avenue Bruat are the Gendarmerie, the Commissariat, the Palais de Justice, and all the rest of the mischief-making arms of Government. As if in compensation, on the other end where it runs into the harbor, are four or five nightclubs and bars of varying degrees of sophistication. The Pitate, right on the corner, was putting forth a cacophony of Tahitian music, and a dozen or so Tahitians stood on the sidewalk peering through the open windows at the debauch within.
Around the corner, just in front of the UTA airline office, there were five motorcycles parked together. I added mine to the fleet on the old hide-a-tree-in-a-forest principle and stepped quickly across the road.
Thirty seconds later I was dropping cautiously onto the stern of the Aventurier. I tiptoed up to the closed hatchway and tried to see if any light was showing around the edges. There was none that I could make out, and there was limit to how long I could skulk furtively in plain view of any passerby, so I drew a deep breath and slowly turned the handle. It was unlocked.
That should have made me think. Instead I poked my head in.
The interior of the boat was a black pit. I stepped blindly down the ladder and came to a halt at the bottom. I stood there motionlessly until my eyes became accustomed enough to the feeble light coming in through the portholes to distinguish the outline of the main cabin. Reluctantly I left the relative comfort of being next to the escape-way and moved deeper into the boat. The first door I came to opened noiselessly to my touch. The blood was pounding in my ears as I stood there until I could see that it was empty. I left the door open and turned to the cabin on the other side. I began to push its door open, but a slight creak brought me to a halt with one foot in midair. I posed there for what was probably no longer than three or four years, my senses straining, then let out a soft breath and put my foot down.
I tried lifting on the handle as I pushed, and this time the door swung open silently. I could vaguely make out two bunks against the wall. They seemed to be empty. I stepped in to make completely certain, and from six inches away a voice whispered in my ear, “What a pleasant surprise.…”
About the time my heart stopped beating, the Golden Gate Bridge collapsed on me.
CHAPTER 33
When I came to my senses it was daylight and the bed I was lying in seemed to be shifting from side to side. My head throbbed and my eyes were gummed together. There was a dull, intense ache in both my arms. I pried my eyes open and dimly recognized what looked like the inside of a boat’s cabin. I was lying on the bottom bunk, and the paneled door a few feet away was shut. Light filtered in through a porthole.
After a while a primitive kind of brain response passed the message to me that we were at sea. I moaned and fell back. I hate boats. Even big ones. Like the Queen Mary. Eons passed. A queasy feeling began to built up in my stomach, and bile seeped into my mouth. The pain in my arms became agonizing. Then why don’t you stop lying on them, I thought dimly, and tried to pull them out from under me. They wouldn’t move.
I began to panic. I pushed myself to a half-upright position and managed to focus my watery eyes on my feet. They were tied together around my ankles with white nylon rope.
Memories of the previous night flooded in at the same time I realized that my hands were tightly bound behind me, and I groaned aloud. I sank back on the bed, devastated by futility. My stomach began to churn. Hastily I swung my bound legs over the edge of the bunk and rocked my torso upright. I hunched there miserably with my head between my knees until the waves of nausea had passed.
My hero, I muttered bitterly. At least you can keep from throwing up. What else can you do?
Nothing, it seemed.
I could move my legs, and even my arms up to a point, but there was no sensation at all where memory told me I ought to have had hands and fingers.
My eyes closed while I slumped there and I drifted in and out of consciousness for what seemed like seconds but might have been hours. When I opened them again bright sunlight was pouring into the cabin. It hurt my eyes. The throbbing in my head seemed to have subsided a bit, but now I had a further problem: I had to go to the bathroom. I grit my teeth and cursed feebly. It just wasn’t my day.
The door swung open and Jean-Paul Luria, the smallest of the three paratroopers, stepped in cautiously. I say smallest, but only comparatively speaking: he was still big enough to fill most of the room. Quickly he checked the bindings on my ankles and wrists, then moved back to lean casually against the door.
He smiled tolerantly. “You gave me quite a start when you came aboard.”
“You were waiting for me.”
He nodded. “Oh, not for you, of course. Just for anyone who might have decided to pay a visit.”
“I should have known when I found the hatchway unlocked.”
“Yes. There are a number of rather valuable items aboard. And after our experience with the Payton woman, we decided to stand a permanent watch.”
“I don’t wonder, for a million dollars.”
His smile vanished. “Is that what you came on board for?”
“Where else would it be?”
“Where indeed?” He ran his hand thoughtfully along his chin. “Just what made you think it might be here?” he said slowly. “I rather think we ought to know.”
“Take these damn ropes off me and I’ll be happy to tell you. I can’t think with them on.”
His face hardened. “You’ll just have to try. In fact, you’re hardly in any position to bargain, are you? I really think you better tell me before I have to become…persuasive, hmmm?”
I shut my eyes and sighed. All I needed was a little torture. “It’s no big deal,” I said. “I was sitting in jail telling myself that if I was innocent, that had to mean that someone else was guilty.”
“I can follow that,” said Jean-Paul gravely.
“The next question was who? ‘Well, let’s see,’I said to myself. ‘What about the paratroopers, for instance? Naw, they had to be innocent of killing the Wests, since they were in jail at the time, and probably of the kidnapping too, unless they had a whole houseful of accomplices.’ But then I said to myself for no particular reason, ‘Suppose the paratroopers had been sitting here in t
his very same cell, asking themselves the very same question: if they were innocent, then who could be guilty?
“‘And if that was the case, where would their thoughts have led them?’”
Jean-Paul nodded approvingly. “What we actually said was, ‘Some bastard has framed us.’ Naturally you were the first person we thought of, but the more we considered it, the more we came around to suspecting the Wests. After all, who else could have a better motive? And if the frame-up worked they’d not only stick a kidnapping and murder rap on someone else, they’d also have our hotel without any more fuss.”
“So you decided they were the kidnappers?”
Jean-Paul shrugged. “Who else could it be? It wasn’t us. Who else could have framed us? You see, it was just like we tried to tell you: we hadn’t been sleeping with Danielle Payton. Therefore there was no way she could have left her purse here on our boat, whether we were supposed to be fucking her or kidnapping her.”
“And the same thing for the cigarette lighter up in the generator house,” I said. He nodded.
“I must admit that what shook us was that diary,” Jean-Paul went on meditatively. “We didn’t think Bob West would have had the smarts to think of faking something like that.”
“Tamara Payton told me he used to brag about his brains. Maybe he just turned them on for the benefit of certain people.”
“No use wasting them on us peasants, eh?” said Jean-Paul darkly, then brightened perceptibly, probably as he recalled where Bob West and all his brains were lying at this very moment. “But that’s the only reasoning that brought you here?”
I hesitated, but couldn’t think of any advantage in not answering. “I wish it was. Even that idiot Schneider might think of it, and show up here in his little helicopter one of these minutes.”
“No fear,” said Jean-Paul cheerfully, “we’re forty miles from the nearest land. But you were saying…?”
“That I wish I hadn’t been so smart,” I said dully. It looked like being my epitaph. “It wasn’t hard to see that you guys would single out the Wests pretty quickly. And once I started thinking about you people I came back to that car that dumped me over the cliff. Remember that? The Wests were dead by then—they couldn’t have done it. Well then, what about my friends the Three Stooges?”
“The what?”
“It’s too long to explain. ‘The paras could have done it all right,’ I said to myself, ‘they were out of jail, thanks to their pal LaRoche. But why?’ That’s what had me baffled. Why would they want to push good old LaRoche over a cliff?”
“A good question,” said Jean-Paul. “I take it you did find an answer.”
“Oh yes,” I said ruefully. “I went over everything I could remember that led up to it, from the time I first saw you guys, to that drunken evening we spent together. And just when I was beginning to think you were a bunch of nice guys,” I said aggrievedly.
“We are nice guys,” protested Jean-Paul seriously.
“Nice guys keep frozen fingers in their freezers?” I demanded. “That’s when you decided to kill me, isn’t it?” I looked him straight in the eye.
He looked straight back. If his conscience troubled him, he took care not to show it. “I told Jérôme it was a mistake to put them there, but he thought it was funny. He has a peculiar sense of humor.”
“So I see,” I said bitterly. “I suppose you found them out at the hotel—you told me you’d been there after the Wests were dead and you’d been sprung from jail.”
“Yes. Yves-Louis found them, quite by chance. They were behind the ice tray in the little bar-refrigerator West had in his office. A dangerous place to keep them I would have thought.”
“But not a bad idea,” I said judiciously. “I think they probably killed Danielle Payton the moment I told them that you guys had been arrested for the kidnapping. She’d served her purpose of getting her photograph taken a couple of times with the daily paper and getting Payton down here ready to deal. After that, all they needed was a nice fresh finger from time to time to remind Payton of what was happening.…”
Jean-Paul nodded disapprovingly. “That was very wicked of them. The Wests were not nice people.”
“And you guys are?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Certainly none of us would kidnap a friend of ours and then cut off her fingers before killing her.” His gaze was pensive. “On the other hand, we do need money. And once you’ve found some fingers.…” His shrug was eloquent.
“You decided to take up where the Wests left off,” I said. “It would be a cinch. While they were questioning you the cops had shown you the ransom notes and filled you in with everything they knew about the case up to that point: an interrogator always gives away as much as he learns.”
“As you say, it was no big deal. Our English is pretty bad, but plenty good enough to write a ransom note, especially since the Wests had been so kind to write their own in broken English.”
“And you do know how to set up a payoff,” I said. “That was really a professional job.”
Jean-Paul looked pleased. “Well, we are professionals, of course.”
“But what about the other four million?” I asked. “Are you going to go for them too?”
He snorted. “Don’t be silly. I don’t think it was ever really our intention to, we just wanted to tempt you into letting us get away with the first payoff. But now, with the situation as it is, we’d be crazy to try it.”
“The situation?” I echoed hopefully. If something was stirring, things might be looking up for me—certainly they couldn’t be getting any worse. But of course I was wrong.
“Why, having you on the boat, of course,” said Jean-Paul. “Here you are, you’ve been arrested for kidnapping and murder, and there’s a million dollars missing that was last seen in your hands. Now you’ve broken out of jail—that was well done, by the way, congratulations—and disappeared into the bush. Suppose that you and the million dollars just disappear forever?”
If possible, my mouth was drier than it had been before. “Yeah,” I said. “No LaRoche, and no million bucks, and no more case. Sooner or later they’ll stop looking. Not really a very satisfactory conclusion, but what the hell, there’s no sense in looking any further.”
“You sum it up very well,” said Jean-Paul smugly. “I admire your detachment. So that’s why there’ll be no more ransom notes, and, of course…” his voice trailed off for a moment, “no more LaRoche.…”
I tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
He nodded amiably and left quickly, shutting the door behind him. I stared at it despairingly. A moment later it popped back open and his head appeared around the edge. “By the way,” he asked conversationally, “you did see those damn fingers in our freezer, didn’t you? I’d hate to think we tried to kill you for nothing.…”
I let out my breath and nodded fatalistically. “Yeah,” I said. “I thought they were breakfast sausages, all wrapped up in plastic like that. It took me a while to remember that Frenchmen don’t eat sausages for breakfast.…”
“They don’t put ice cubes in their cognac, either,” he said somberly. “It’s strange to think that life or death can depend on such a barbarian custom.…”
The eternal Frenchman.
“I’ll never do it again,” I promised with all my soul.
“I like you, LaRoche,” he said solemnly. “I really do. It’s too bad that.… Well.…” He came all the way into the cabin and stood looking down at me. “I’ll…make certain you don’t suffer. Drowning is a nasty death.”
I grimaced. “And…then? Over the side?”
He nodded, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Once I find something to weigh you down. You’d be surprised how hard it is to find something like that on a yacht.”
“No hurry,” I said, “I’ll wait.”
His teeth flashed in a white smile and he was gone.
I’d still forgotten to tell him I wanted to go to the bathroom.
So I lay back and
waited.
CHAPTER 34
While I was waiting though, I was thinking. I was thinking that I had long, long arms. Arms that were now tied behind my back. Maybe for once long arms could be useful.
Wriggling frantically I forced my bound wrists down my back and under my raised rear end. The ropes seemed to catch, my shoulders twisted painfully in their joints, I gritted my teeth.…
.…and my hands were past.
I drew a deep breath and opened my eyes.
My hands were up against the insides of my knees. I jack-knifed my legs and slipped my arms under my feet and on out. I lifted them in the air to admire them. They were free. Bravo, LaRoche!
There was a thud, and my heart turned over. I lay back petrified, waiting for Jean-Paul to come and get me, but nothing happened. The noise must have been on deck.
I resumed breathing and examined my hands. I tried to wiggle the fingers. No go.
The rope that bound my wrists was the same white nylon that held my ankles together. A large knot stared me in the face. I didn’t have a pocketknife, or a piece of broken glass, or even a magnifying glass and the sun’s rays to help me out, but I did have a set of the strongest, whitest, most firmly anchored teeth in all of San Francisco County. At least that’s what my dentist, a dapper young Chinese named Dr. Lee liked to tell me. “Be sure and leave them to dental science in your will,” he said at the end of each check-up. “They belong in a museum, not some lousy grave.”
Especially a watery one. I could drink to that.
I raised my wrists to my mouth.…
Twenty minutes later the door opened abruptly. Jean-Paul’s head appeared around the edge and his eyes found me on the bunk. He glanced at the bindings on my legs and nodded to himself. An enormous knife blade proceeded him into the cabin. “Jesus,” I breathed, aghast, unable to tear my eyes from it. “That’s what…what you’re gonna use for a…for a…?” I gulped, unable to get the words out.
Trouble in Tahiti Page 21
