Ten thousand francs! Madame Lagrue felt as if a cold wind were howling around her, as if she were being buried alive beneath a snowdrift of misery.
‘Well?’ said Fatima cruelly. ‘Let’s have it. A vous la balle, madame.’
‘I’ll have the law on you,’ croaked Madame Lagrue. ‘Ill have the police destroy that scandalous object.’
‘Save your breath, miser. This is a work of art, and you know as well as I do that nobody destroys a work of art because it might bother someone. Now enough of such nonsense. What’s your offer?’
Madame stared at the slip of paper in her tormentor’s hand. Oh, for one little look at the figure written on it—
‘Ten thousand,’ she gasped.
The look of contempt on Fatima’s face, the curl of that lip, told Madame she had miscalculated after all, she had cut it too fine. She thought of the crowds gathered before Florelle’s window staring with obscene delight at the picture; she thought of them gathering before her own window, leering and nudging each other, hoping to get a glimpse of her in her disgrace. She’d never be able to go out on the street again. She’d be driven out of business in a month, a week—
‘No, wait!’ she cried. ‘I meant fifteen thousand! Of course, fifteen thousand. I don’t know what got into me. It was a slip of the tongue!’
‘You said ten thousand.’
‘I swear it was a mistake! Take fifteen. I insist you take it.’
Fatima glanced at her slip of paper. She gnawed her lip, weighing the case in her mind. ‘All right, I’ll be merciful. But I want my money right now.’
‘I don’t have that much in cash here. I’ll send the girl to the bank.’
‘And I want a paper to show that the deal is strictly on the level.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll make it out for you while we’re waiting.’
The pale, timid assistant must have run like a rabbit. She was back in almost no time with an envelope stuffed full of banknotes which she handed to Madame Lagrue through the partly opened door of the office. Tears trickled down Madame’s cheeks as she gave the money to Fatima.
‘This is my life’s blood,’ Madame said. ‘You’ve drained me dry, criminal.’
‘Liar, you’ve made a million from your poor painters,’ Fatima retorted. ‘It’s time at least one of them was paid what you owe him.’
As she left, she crumpled the slip of paper in her hand and carelessly tossed it to the floor.
‘You don’t have to see us off at the plane,’ she said in farewell. ‘Just stay here and enjoy your picture.’
No sooner had the office door slammed behind her than Madame snatched up the crumpled paper from the floor and opened it with trembling fingers. Her eyes, as she saw the figure written on it in a large childish hand, almost bulged from her head.
Twenty francs!
Madame Lagrue wildly pounded her fists on the desk and screamed and screamed until the frightened assistant had to throw water in her face to quiet her.
The Payoff
The four men aboard Belinda II watched the Coast Guard helicopter racketing its way southward on patrol along the Miami Beach shoreline.
‘Handy little gadget,’ Broderick said, and Yates, echoing the boss man as usual, said, ‘Very handy.’
‘Depends,’ Del said sourly. He glanced at Chappie, who said nothing.
Broderick and Yates were in their middle forties, both of them big and hefty, with paunches showing under their yachting jackets. Chappie and Del were in their early twenties, flat-bellied in swim trunks.
Broderick, glassy-eyed with bourbon, squinted at his watch. ‘Thirty-five minutes. Last time was thirty-three. Let’s call it an even half hour to be on the safe side.’ He looked Chappie up and down. ‘You sure that’s enough time for you?’
Chappie said, ‘It’s enough,’ and went back to whetting the blade of his clasp knife on the stone Broderick had turned up in the galley. The blade was four inches long, Bowie-shaped.
Broderick, one hand on the wheel, steadied Belinda II, keeping her bow toward the swells riding inshore, her motor almost idling. ‘You absolutely sure?’
Del said angrily, ‘You heard him, didn’t you? What the hell you want to keep picking on him about it?’
‘Because we are cutting down on the excuse quotient,’ Yates said. He was as stoned as Broderick, his face even more flaming red with windburn and Jim Beam. ‘Because we do not want to hear afterward how you couldn’t do it because that chopper didn’t allow enough time. Or any other excuse.’
‘Well, you won’t be hearing no excuses,’ Del said, and Chappie snapped the knife shut and said to him, ‘Cool it, man. Just get that baby boat over here.’
As Del hauled the dinghy alongside Belinda II by its line, Chappie shoved the knife into a plastic sandwich-bag, rolled up the bag, and thrust it into the waistband of his trunks. The outboard motor had already been clamped to the sternboard of the dinghy. Del stepped down into the dinghy, took his place at the motor. Chappie dropped down into the bow of the dinghy, untied its line, pushed off from Belinda II. Broderick joined Yates at the rail of the cabin cruiser, both of them watching with the same tight little smiles. Broderick cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled over the noise of the outboard. ‘Twenty-eight minutes left.’
They were about two miles away from the towering line of hotels and high-rises along the shore. The sunlight was scorching but a cool gusting breeze made it bearable. Del centered the bow of the dinghy on the big hotel dead ahead, the Royal Oceanic, tried to keep the boat from yawing and chopping too badly as it moved landward. He eyed Chappie who squatted there on the bow seat, rocking with the motion, his face empty.
‘Suppose the layout’s changed over there from the way Broderick told it,’ Del said. He pointed his chin at the hotel.
‘Changed how?’
‘Rooms, halls, you know what I mean. That was a couple of years ago he stayed there. They could have tore down things, built up things, so it’s all changed around now.’
‘You worry too much,’ Chappie said.
‘Because I just don’t like this kind of a deal, man. We wouldn’t even be in it if that big-mouth Broderick wasn’t a mess of bad vibrations. Now ain’t that the truth?’
‘Nothing but,’ Chappie said.
‘You see.’ Del solemnly shook his head. ‘Man, it sure is different from yesterday. I mean like up Palm Beach way when they said come on along and they’d give us a hitch right to Freeport. Fact is, I kind of took to them first look.’
‘Only way to find out about people is move in with them,’ Chappie said.
They were getting close to shore now. The swells the dinghy had been riding were taking shape as combers that crested and broke on the narrow, dirty-looking strip of sand fronting the hotel. Some people were standing in the surf. One of them shaded his eyes to look at the dinghy. Del swung it around, bow pointing seaward, and cut the motor. He stood up to gauge the distance to the beach.
‘Maybe a hundred yards,’ he said. ‘Just remember the low profile, man.’
‘You, too,’ Chappie said. He slid overboard, ducked underwater, came up shaking the hair out of his eyes. He rested a hand on the edge of the dinghy. ‘Don’t let it look like you’re waiting here. Take a ride for yourself. Then when you’re back here, fool around with the motor.’
He went deep under the boat, swam hard, and when he bobbed to the surface on the crest of a wave he turned and saw the dinghy wheeling away northward. He let the next wave carry him half the remaining distance to the beach. When he got to his feet he found the water only up to his waist. Off-balance, he was thrown forward on his hands and knees by a following wave. As he pitched forward, he felt the plastic bag with the knife in it slither down his thigh. He clutched at it, missed it, and came up with a handful of slimy, oil-soaked seaweed instead. He flung the seaweed aside. Then he saw the bag, open now, the knife showing through it, come to roost on the tide line up ahead. None of the bathers around him seemed to take any special
notice as he got to the bag fast, poured the water out of it, wrapped it tight around the knife again, and shoved it back into his waistband.
He stood for a few seconds looking seaward. Belinda II, a small white patch on the horizon, got even smaller as it ran out into the Gulf Stream. Overhead there was no helicopter in sight. Nobody to take in the scene and connect the cabin cruiser with its dinghy or the dinghy with the passenger it had just landed.
He turned, crossed the strip of beach to the walled-in sun deck of the hotel. A broad flight of concrete steps led to the still deck. A lifeguard type in white ducks and a T-shirt marked Royal Oceanic stood at the head of the steps, his arms folded on his chest, his eyes on the beach. As Chappie passed by, the eyes swiveled toward him, flicked over him, then went back to surveying the beach.
Lounges in long neat rows took up most of the sun deck. The rest was taken up by a big swimming pool, its deep end toward the beach, its shallow end not far from the rear entrance to the hotel. A lot of the lounges were occupied; the pool was almost empty. Chappie strolled toward the pool, stepped up on the edge of it.
‘Hey, you!’
Chappie froze there. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the lifeguard type walking toward him, aiming a finger at him. ‘You,’ the man said. ‘What goes on?’ The finger aimed downward now at Chappie’s feet. ‘Bring all that sand up from the beach, mister, you ought to know enough to take a shower before you get in the pool.’ He nodded toward what looked like a phone booth with canvas walls. ‘Shower’s right over there.’
Chappie slowly released his breath. Thumb in the waistband of his trunks, hand covering the bulge of the knife in the waistband, he went over to the shower booth, stepped inside, braced himself against the shock of cold water jetting down on him.
When he walked out of the booth the lifeguard type gave him a nod and a smile, and he nodded and smiled in return. Then he went into the pool feet first, keeping a grip on the knife in his belt until he picked up his swimming stroke. He covered almost the whole length of the pool under water, hoisted himself out at the shallow end. It was only a few steps from there to the hotel entrance. Inside the entrance he was in an arcade, a coffee shop on one side, a souvenir shop on the other. After the searing glare of the sunlight outside, the arcade seemed like a cool, damp, unlit cave, but by the time he had walked past the coffee shop he was used to the lighting. A door behind the shop was marked Men’s Sauna, and there was a steady traffic coming and going through it.
Chappie went in and entered a long and wide corridor, narrower corridors branching off from it on both sides. It was hot and close here, the air growing steadily hotter and more humid as he walked along counting, and when he turned into the fourth corridor on the left a smell of sweat became unpleasantly noticeable. The walls in this section were all white tile, and each door along the way had a lettered plate on it: Steam Room, Dry Heat, Showers, Personnel, Service. The door to the service room was wide open, kept in place by a rubber doorstop. As he passed it, Chappie took quick notice of the shelves of towels and sheets there. Almost out of sight in a corner of the room, someone was hauling towels from a shelf.
When he reached the end of the corridor, Chappie leaned against the wall, bent down as if to examine an ankle, his eyes sidelong on the open door of the service room. Then a boy in sandals and swim trunks emerged from the room with a bundle of towels under his arm. As soon as he was out of sight around a corner, Chappie went into the service room and helped himself to an armful of towels. He carried them back to the end of the corridor which ran into a short hallway that crossed it like the head of a capital T.
The doors in this hallway were numbered. Chappie carefully pushed open Number One an inch and looked inside. The room was small and windowless, its only furnishings a rubbing table and a shelf on the wall with a row of bottles and jars on it. On the table a big man with the build of a football linebacker was getting a rubdown from a masseur.
Chappie left the door as it was and tried the next room. It was empty. The third room, however, was occupied. A man wearing dark goggles lay stretched out on his back on the rubbing table, a cigar clamped between his teeth and pointing up at the ceiling, a sunlamp brilliantly lighting his naked body. A white-haired man, skinny and wrinkled, his face and body tanned a leathery brown. Clearly visible in the glare of the sunlamp was a tattoo on one scrawny forearm, done in garish colors. A coiled rattlesnake, and circling it in bold print the words Don’t Tread On Me.
Chappie looked over his shoulder. There was no hotel staff man in sight, only some customers walking around in sandals and bathsheets. He got a good grip on the bundle of towels under his arm and went into the room. It reeked of cigar smoke and was hot enough to make him break into a sweat as he stood there closing the door softly behind him. He could feel the beads of sweat starting to trickle down his forehead and chest.
The click of the door lock roused the man. Without turning his head he said, ‘Benny?’
‘No, sir,’ Chappie said. He moved toward the table. ‘But he sent me in to check up.’
‘Check up?’ the man said. ‘What the hell’s he trying to do, fix up everybody in the place with a handout?’
‘No, sir. But he said you’re not to get too much of that lamp on your front and more on your back.’
As Chappie walked over to the table, his toes struck something on the floor beside it. A plastic ashtray with cigar ash in it. More cigar ash was scattered on the floor around it. Chappie stacked his armful of towels on the foot of the rubbing table and picked up the ashtray, the clasp knife digging into his groin as he did so. He said, ‘If you don’t mind, sir,’ and took the cigar from between the man’s teeth and deposited it in the ashtray. He put the ashtray back on the floor, pushing it far under the table.
The lenses in the goggles were so dark that Chappie couldn’t see the man’s eyes through them as he leaned forward over him. The man’s head was resting on a folded towel. Chappie lifted the head barely enough to slide the towel out, and found the towel soaked through with sweat. He dropped it on the floor and gently set the man’s head down again. ‘Want me to help you turn over, sir?’
The goggles fixed on him. ‘You new around here, boy?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I thought so. Well, if you know what’s good for you you’ll help me turn over so nice and easy I don’t feel a twinge. Damn bursitis is killing me. So very nice and easy, you hear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The man grunted and groaned as he was arranged on his belly. Then he raised his head a little. ‘What the hell are you saving those towels for? This thing is like an ironing board.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Chappie.
He took a towel from the pile, folded it and slid it under the man’s head. The man rested his head on it. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘now beat it.’
Chappie glanced at the closed door. Then he came up on his toes like a bullfighter preparing to plant his pics, both arms raised, left elbow out as if warding off an attack. His right hand flashed down expertly, all his strength behind it, and the edge of the palm drove into the nape of the man’s neck like an ax blade. The leathery old body jerked violently, the legs snapping backward from the knees, then falling to the table again, one leg shivering. Chappie came up on his toes again, struck again. The leg stopped shivering. The body settled down into the table like a tub of fresh dough poured on it. One stringy arm slipped off the table and dangled there, its fingers half curled.
Chappie pulled the plastic bag from his waistband, took the knife out of it, opened the blade. He pulled the goggles high up on the man’s forehead to give himself room, then slashed off the man’s ear with one stroke of the knife. There was no welling of blood, just an ooze of it along the line of the wound. He cleaned the knife blade hastily with a fresh towel from the pile, snapped it shut, and put the knife and ear into the plastic bag.
Coming out of the arcade into glaring daylight he was blinded by the sun and almost bumped into a couple of pe
ople as he made his way to the pool. He swam fast to the deep end, giving the diving boards there a wide berth, but as he neared the ladder at the deep end there was a sudden loud splash in his face, a blow on the side of the head that pulled him up short.
It was a girl who had jumped off the side of the pool and was now treading water face to face with him. She was about 16 or 17, her long straight hair in strings down her face. She pulled some of the strings aside and said worriedly, ‘Honest, I didn’t mean that. Are you all right?’
‘Sure,’ Chappie said. He rested his hands on her shoulders and she let them stay there. She seemed to like it.
Chappie saw that some of the people standing on the edge of the pool were looking down at them. He released the girl and went up the ladder. ‘Hey,’ the girl called after him, ‘are you staying here at the hotel?’ but he didn’t answer or look back.
The lifeguard type was still at the head of the stairway to the beach. Chappie slowed down to a casual walk going past the man and down the steps. He took his time crossing the narrow strip of beach and looked out over the pale green water. The dinghy was rocking up and down beyond the line of breakers, its motor pulled up horizontal, Del pretending to fiddle with it. Belinda II was barely in sight on the horizon. She seemed to be stationary now, but it was hard to judge from that distance. Chappie looked up. No helicopter showing anywhere.
He waded into the surf, went under a couple of lines of breakers, and swam to the dinghy. As he hauled himself into the bow, Del dropped the motor back into the water, got it snarling into life with a quick flick of the cord. The dinghy aimed for Belinda II, bouncing hard, and Chappie said, ‘Don’t make it look like a getaway, man. Cut it down.’
Del eased up on the throttle. He looked at Chappie. ‘You do it?’
‘I did it.’
‘No sweat?’
‘No. He looked about ready to go anyhow. And you can swim right up to that door there. You don’t even have to walk in front of people.’ Chappie spat overboard to get the taste of salt water out of his mouth. ‘There’s some massage artist name of Benny who is in for a big surprise pretty soon. Maybe even got it already.’ He had to smile at the thought.
The Specialty of the House Page 55
