Jean-Paul looked down at his hand. “What, this? Oh.” A look of indignation crossed his face. “This is just to cut the ropes off your feet, you think I want to carry you up on deck?”
I ran my tongue over my lips. “You don’t know what you looked like, coming in with that thing.”
“Sorry,” he said, abashed. “I wasn’t thinking. Here, stick your legs over the edge.”
For someone who was going to kill me and weigh my body to sink in a thousand fathoms of water he really wasn’t all that bad a guy. It was kind of too bad.…
Jean-Paul sliced neatly through the ropes and set the knife on the floor. Leaning forward, he took me firmly by the upper arm and began to tug me off the bunk.
I came forward, and as I did I brought the loop of nylon from behind my back and slipped it over his head. It was around his neck, just above the adam’s apple, before he realized what was happening. I began to pull.…
I’d had plenty of time while I was waiting to fashion the garrote and to anchor it solidly to my left fist. There was a smaller loop for my right hand to grab, and now I had more than just strong white teeth going for me.
I had strong hands and muscular arms, and an even stronger sense of terror, all of them stoked by all the adrenaline in the world.
Jean-Paul’s eyes popped, first with amazement, then with pain, then with horror. I felt his warm breath against my face, and his hands began to scrabble desperately at the rope that cut so cruelly into his flesh.…
I wrapped my legs around him and tumbled him onto the bunk. He pummeled my upper arms and finally began to scratch at my eyes, but by that time I’d dug my face hard against his chest.
Another minute and it was all over. His arms fell limp, his body relaxed suddenly, and a fetid odor filled the cabin. I yanked the cord even tighter, probably out of sheer vengefulness, and kept it buried in his throat for another full minute before I rolled him off me.
I climbed shakily to my feet and looked down at him with hatred and fear. His tongue protruded and his eyes showed mostly white. I began to unwind the homemade garrote from my hands.
“That’s my little surprise, sonny boy,” I said to the lifeless body.
I stood rubbing my hands and fingers, then bent over to pick up the knife. It was a twelve-inch kitchen knife and I hefted it reluctantly. I’d had enough of killing, especially at close quarters.
But it looked as if there wasn’t going to be any alternative.
Unless.…
I searched Jean-Paul’s body, but there was no gun. Maybe he had intended to use the knife on me.…
I stepped out into the passageway just as Jérôme came through the main cabin, an impatient scowl on his broad face.
“What’s the mat—” he said, just before the knife blade sank into his stomach.
I couldn’t bring myself to twist it around the way you’re supposed to if you want to make certain, but I let it stay there while his mouth gaped in silent agony and his eyes looked up at mine in enormous amazement. His hands dropped down to his belly and he sank slowly to his knees. I stepped carefully out of the way, pulling the knife out as he fell. He crumpled over on his side, his mouth working like a fish’s.
I was wondering what to do next, when he suddenly let out an appalling scream compounded of terror and agony. It rooted me to the spot, and then I heard footsteps pounding along the deck. I knelt to rapidly run my hands over his writhing form, and Yves-Louis’s cropped white head popped through the open hatchway. He stared at me a moment in wild-eyed astonishment, made a movement forward, thought better of it, and disappeared.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. There was no gun on Jérôme either. He was holding himself now and moaning quietly. His eyes rolled around to look at me beseechingly.
“Sorry, pal,” I said. “You should have stuck to the hotel game.”
I wiped the bloody blade on Jérôme’s shirt and plodded heavily through the cabin.
When I came on deck Yves-Louis was at the front of the boat, the bow I guess the boat-types call it, pawing frantically through an open tool chest.
“Jesus,” I muttered, “maybe he’s got the gun. Or a machete.…”
He straightened up and I saw that he hadn’t.
What he did have though, was a large shiny ax.…
We stalked each other silently around the deck while the boat plunged unattended through the grey seas. The deck pitched regularly beneath my feet, and I wished I was wearing rubber-soled shoes. Yves-Louis was as surefooted as a monkey as he came slowly down the left side, ax cradled in both hands, while I slid cautiously forward on the right.
The deck was about ten feet wide, and we circled warily around the various cabins and hatches, each of us occasionally feinting at the other, trying to draw a reaction that would leave an opening.…
Tama had called Yves-Louis Buisson the weak link of the three paras, and maybe he was. Or maybe he was like me, and simply didn’t relish the idea of mixing it up hand to hand with someone armed with a twelve-inch pig sticker. Whatever it was, we would have made lousy gladiators. After five minutes of circling neither of us had come within six feet of the other.…
Sweat was pouring down my body and I wondered how long I could keep this up in the noontime sun. I blinked at Yves-Louis. His bare torso was shiny with sweat and more than once he raised an arm to flick it off his forehead. Toting a ten-pound ax at arms’ length couldn’t have been easy.…
Suddenly he lunged, the ax flashing in an overhead looping stroke. I stepped back instinctively and the blade cut deep into the roof of the forward cabin. If I’d been a real knife-fighter I’d have stepped in then and carved him up while he yanked desperately to retrieve his weapon, but I was too nervous to do more than back away, my right hand waggling the knife loosely at my side.
It brushed something on the cabin roof and I jumped. I flicked a glance downward while I continued my slow backward shuffle. What I saw made me hesitate, come to a stop, then quickly step forward. Yves-Louis regarded me dubiously.
I switched the knife to my left hand and waved it menacingly. With my right I reached for what I’d just brushed against. It was a small cardboard container. Inside were half a dozen shiny stainless-steel pulleys about the size of my fist. I supposed they had something to do with the sails. I reached out and hefted one tentatively in my hand.
I think I smiled.
Yves-Louis began to back off uneasily.
For the first time since I’d come on deck, one of us spoke.
“Too bad you Frenchmen don’t play baseball,” I said, “instead of that stupid game you mistakenly call football.”
Jean-Louis lifted the ax higher, across his chest, but his eyes flicked uncertainly from side to side.
“Here, Yves-Louis, let me show you how it’s done.…”
It’d been twenty years since Rocket-Arm LaRoche had rifled the ball from third base and thirty feet over the first baseman’s head, but nothing had changed. I missed him with the first throw from twelve feet.…
The second one took him on the shoulder, and I heard him grunt with pain. He ducked the third one with a desperate lunge, but caught the next one square in the face. It made a nasty squishing sound, and blood and saliva exploded around his head. The ax dropped from his hands and he staggered backwards blindly, his fingers digging at his face.
I stepped forward, hooked his ankle, and with a gentle push flipped him backwards over the side and into the sea.
By the time I saw his head bob to the surface, it was thirty feet behind the boat.…
I tossed a life jacket into the foamy wake and forgot about him. For a while I slumped half-dazed against a hatchway and watched the wind puff the sails and listened to the creaks and groans of the masts and rigging. At some point I became aware that I still gripped the knife in my left hand. I tossed it overboard too, and made my way down to the cabin.
Jérôme had crawled halfway across it, leaving a trail of blood. He was breathing noisily, and his eyes focused
themselves on me as I approached. I squatted down beside him. “Can you hear me?” I asked. He nodded.
“That’s good. You’re going to do a couple things for me, and I want to make sure I have your attention. Your pal Jean-Paul is dead in that cabin. I strangled him. Your other pal Yves-Louis is out there seeing if he can swim as far as Tahiti. I threw him overboard. You do believe me, or you’d prefer me to haul you around to show you?”
“I…I believe you,” he whispered.
“That’s great. Because if you don’t do what I tell you, I’m going to haul you on deck and throw you over for the sharks. Do you believe that?”
“Oh Jesus, man, I believe you,” he gasped.
Maybe there was something scary about me.…
After I wrapped some bandages around his body I dragged him over to the communications corner of the cabin and in five minutes he had me talking with the French Navy in Papeete. It took longer than that to get them to take me seriously, but by the time I broke the connection I knew that help was on the way.
I went on deck and following muffled instructions from Jérôme managed to get the boat turned around and headed for Tahiti.
I came back below and nudged him with my foot. “Now,” I said cheerfully, “we’ll just get out the microphone for that cassette deck sitting over there, and we’ll sit back and listen to you tell the story of your life, won’t we, Jérôme? You did hear what the Navy said, didn’t you? That the earliest they could get here would be at least three or four hours? Lots of time for you to tell me and the tape all about your freezer full of fingers and your booby traps full of dynamite. And, of course, under which loose plank you’ve got the million bucks stashed.”
His eyelids flickered and closed, and he moaned softly.
I encouraged him again with my foot. A little harder this time.
“Plenty of time to drag you up and throw you over.…”
“Get the microphone,” he said weakly.
“Sure.” I started across the cabin, then stopped. “Do you know? I’ve still forgotten to go to the john.”
CHAPTER 35
The Navy found us just before dark. Whatever kind of boat it was—it was larger than a yacht and smaller than an aircraft carrier—I was pleased to see it. It paced us for a few minutes, then winched down a motor launch. There were half a dozen men on board, two sailors, three machine-gun toting gendarmes, and the gargantuan figure of Commissaire Tama. Even though I’d been in radio communication with him for the last two hours I still heaved a sigh of relief. He, at least, wouldn’t shoot on sight. I hoped.
As he clambered aboard with his usual preternatural grace I held out my wrists and grinned. He scowled at me in exasperation, clearly of two minds. A gendarme stepped forward but Tama waved him back impatiently. “Monsieur LaRoche fancies himself what the Americans call a ‘wiseacre.’ I’m afraid that we shall just have to bear it.”
“Baudchon is still breathing,” I said, nodding toward the hatchway. I reached down to pick up a dark leather valise. “And this, my dear Commissaire, is $900,000 in cash.”
* * * *
Charles Wentworth Payton was waiting for us on the waterfront when the Navy steamed into Papeete at midnight, along with assorted ambulances and half the Gendarmerie. Colonel Schneider was not among them. A Capitaine Richecoeur seemed to be in charge. He supervised the loading of the stretcher bearing the inert form of Jérôme Baudchon into one ambulance and of a second carrying Yves-Louis Buisson into another. It’d been Yves-Louis’ lucky day after all: a naval helicopter had spotted his life jacket bobbing in the waves only forty minutes after I’d been picked up. His chances of survival and a lifetime in a French prison were in no doubt at all, unlike Baudchon, whose every breath was in the nature of a miracle.
Payton nodded distantly at me in greeting. “You’ve got it?” he asked harshly.
I sighed and smiled bleakly. I hadn’t expected gratitude but a man can always hope. “Commissaire Tama was kind enough to allow me to present it to you personally.” I handed Payton the valise. “You’ll probably have to turn it over to Tama, since it’s evidence, but in the meantime there it is: $900,000 in cash.”
“Nine hundred?” Payton’s eyebrows rose. “What happened to the rest?”
“You recall offering me one hundred large ones to save the ransom for you?” I said sardonically. “That’s what I’ve done. Along with getting myself shot at, bombed, driven at, pushed over cliffs, clubbed on the head, beaten up, and jailed along the way, all on your behalf. So I’ve deducted it in advance for investment in the LaRoche Retirement Fund.” I eyed him grimly. “That way there will be no misunderstandings.”
He stared at me for a long moment while gendarmes and sailors brushed past impatiently. “I see,” he said at last, and turned to Tama, who was bobbing up and down beside us. Three minutes later a studiously blank-faced Tama relieved me of my $100,000.
“Evidence,” he said dourly. “You’ll have to fight it out with Payton about what belongs to whom.”
Payton leered at me in triumph and turned away.
I nodded, unsurprised, but unable to keep myself from clenching my jaws in anger. “A receipt, please,” I said shortly.
Tama sighed noisily. “Grow up, LaRoche. A receipt for ransom money? Proving that you picked it up? Come on. I had enough trouble getting Schneider taken off this case before he could strafe your boat with napalm—now you want to talk yourself right back into jail again?”
I waggled my head in resignation. “Screw it,” I said. “Who wants to be rich, anyhow?”
* * * *
It was three in the morning by the time we finished listening to the tape I’d made. We were drinking coffee and eating ham sandwiches in an office of the Juge d’Instruction. Besides Tama and Payton, there was Captain Richecoeur from the Gendarmerie and a legal type named Duffieux fronting for the Juge d’Instruction, who was safely home in bed.
“It seems pretty clear,” said Tama, “that Baudchon and company were responsible for the murder of that gendarme. I think that under the circumstances we might be wise to overlook Monsieur LaRoche’s…precipitate behavior in leaving us so suddenly the other day.”
The legal beagle examined me sourly. “Highly irregular,” he pronounced. “There are still a number of ambiguities which need elucidation, as well as the matter of the Yamaha motor—”
Tama waved a hand in exasperation. “For God’s sake, man, he’d just been knocked over a cliff, blown up, and tortured by Schneider’s goons. The man belonged in a hospital. Clearly he was not responsible for his actions. Do you want a public hearing about all that?”
Captain Richecoeur scowled and Duffieux hesitated. “Furthermore,” Tama went on, “you recall that LaRoche had not yet formally been charged with anything—he was merely helping us in our inquiries. Technically it could be argued—”
“Oh very well,” conceded Duffieux irritably. “I’ll have to clear it with the Juge d’Instruction tomorrow, but we’ll assume for now that LaRoche is a free man.”
I sketched a salute of humble acknowledgment.
“But,” Duffieux cautioned, “there are still a number of questions which must first be cleared up to my satisfaction.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as his eyes closed in concentration. “For instance,” he said, “we have now recovered the ransom, and we have the killers of the unfortunate gendarme. Does this now mean that these three wretched paratroopers are, after all, also responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Mrs. Payton?”
At his name Charles Wentworth Payton looked up from where he had been nodding in a corner. He stared at us bleary-eyed.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s just as I said: they were in jail when at least one of the ransom notes was sent; when the ten million francs was picked up by Hitler; and when the Wests were murdered. Unless we go back to the old accomplice theory, there’s no way they could have done all that.”
Duffieux removed his spectacles and began to massage his eyeballs. “Then it’
s just as Baudchon says on that tape: the Wests were responsible for kidnapping and killing Mrs. Payton, and the paras merely took over the ransom demands?”
“Why would Baudchon lie about it?” I asked. “He’s already admitted to blowing up a gendarme. Is there any worse crime than that in France?” From the corner of my I eye I caught a glimpse of Captain Richecoeur of the Gendarmerie grimly shaking his head. “So what’s another murder or two? The paras simply lucked onto those frozen fingers and decided to see if they could cash in on them.”
“Not so very lucky,” contradicted Captain Richecoeur. “For them, that is.”
Tama leaned forward, his lips tight with exasperation, and tapped his finger rhythmically on his desk, to catch our attention. “In that case,” he said slowly, spacing his words to coincide with the taps, “who…killed…the…Wests?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “The person who originated the whole kidnapping scheme and who stood to gain the most from it.”
“You mean the Wests weren’t acting alone?” said Tama with a faint sigh and an expression of here-we-go-again.
“Of course not. It’s just as you thought when you arrested me for being their partner. You just had the wrong man.”
“Well, who’s the right one then,” demanded Tama, nearly beside himself. “And where is he?”
“Where?” I asked wonderingly. “Not far at all. In fact, right over there.” I turned in my chair and raised my arm to point at Charles Wentworth Payton.
CHAPTER 36
There was an embarrassed silence, then Payton snorted sardonically and pursed his lips, while Tama stared at him woodenly. Duffieux blinked at me through his thick lenses and Captain Richecoeur hitched his knee-length stockings a centimeter higher. Only Payton would meet my eye, and he did it defiantly.
“Monsieur Payton?” said Tama after a while. “You’re saying that he killed his wife…and the Wests?” His voice dripped amused tolerance. “LaRoche, I think it’s really true what I said a moment ago: you’ve been bounced on your head once too often.”
Trouble in Tahiti Page 22
