Say It & Murder

by Edward S. Aarons

  “We’ll have to go around Montauk Point. It’s a long trip.”

  “Can we make it?”

  “I think so,” Carmody said.

  Monte grinned, over his spade-shaped beard. “Now you’re being sensible. I guess we haven’t lost everything. Sam cleaned out the cashier’s tills before we ran, so we have a stake for a new start somewhere.”

  “You won’t have a new start,” Carmody said. “You’re all finished. Who’s holding the money, by the way? You or Sam?”

  “Sam is holding it.”

  “Do you have it with you, Sam?” Carmody asked.

  “Shut up,” Sam Link said.

  “And you’re forgetting Lila,” Carmody added. “Her father will get his teeth into this thing like a bulldog and never let it go. She’ll tell the authorities everything they need to know. Even if Sam doesn’t cross you, Monte, you’re going to have to run for it, and you’ll never be able to run far enough or fast enough, because sooner or later they’ll catch up to you. And when they do, that will finish it for good and all.”

  Monte said: “But you’re the only one who can finish me, Bill.”

  “And I intend to, if Sam doesn’t put a knife in your back first.”

  “I’m not worried about Sam. I can handle Sam. It’s you I’m worried about. You talk as if I didn’t have a gun pointed at your belly. You talk as if Sam don’t have one pointed at your girl. I don’t understand you, Bill. You talk big when you have nothing in your hand at all. Nothing, you get it? You’re lucky if I let you live.”

  “You’ve got to let me live,” Carmody said. “Otherwise you’ll never get this boat ashore where you want to go. You can’t sail her, can you? You’ll never make it around the point.”

  The sloop lifted and fell on the cross-seas of the incoming tide. To the left, on the beach, lights still twinkled and moved here and there, and now he saw the bright headlight beams of a beach wagon shoot out over the combers and swerve and then point down the shore toward the jetty they had just left. Dimly over the slap and hiss of the water and the pulsing of the auxiliary engine came the mournful, faraway wail of an ambulance siren.

  Monte laughed again. “They’ll never know where we went.”

  “They’ll know,” Carmody said.

  “Look, Bill, are you asking me to give it to you right now, with that kind of talk? What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “Ask Sam.”

  “What has Sam got to do with it? What are you picking on Sam for?”

  “Just keep your eye on him,” Carmody said, “unless you want your beard snipped short when he cuts your throat.”

  “Look, don’t try to confuse things between us.”

  “I don’t have to try. It’s all screwed up, anyway. Ask Sam how he framed Paul Sloade in Camp Five—how he caused Lucas Deegan to be cut to ribbons at the punishment post. How he lied and stole and killed and turned traitor for a few cigarettes over there. He’s not a man you want at your back, Monte.”

  “Shut up!” Sam Link screamed. His face was contorted. “Shut up, shut up!”

  Looking at him, at his bald freckled face in the light of the binnacle, Carmody felt all the hate that had been corroding him since the war slowly ease away. He wondered what Lucas Deegan might have said at this moment, and what Deegan would have done if he’d had the chance to see the man who had caused his death. He laughed softly.

  “The funny thing about it, Monte, is that you’ve always been a smart operator and you always knew when to cut your losses and clear the board; but this time you’re leaving so many things hanging in air with the cops that they won’t be able to rest until they have a long, long talk with you. They don’t know that Mark Dunning killed Irene and Paul Sloade. Maybe Lila will convince them that what she saw is true, but maybe she won’t. It’s a cinch Robbie won’t make sense for a long time, either. Robbie is going to sweat it out in a padded cell for a while, and nothing he says will be available for court evidence. So put yourself in the cops’ place and figure out the way they’ll do it. They’ll put the finger on you, Monte. On you and Sam. And as I said, you’ll never be able to run fast enough to get away from it.”

  “There’s no proof anywhere,” Monte said uncertainly. “I can straighten out the rap on the gambling operation, given time to let it cool, and that’s all they’ve got on me. The rest of it Hallowell is going to pin on you. And when they find you floating out in the Sound tomorrow or the next day, they’ll close the book on it and forget it.”

  “Do you have the same plan for Martha, too?”

  “It’s got to be that way.”

  “That’s all I want to know,” Carmody said.

  He felt the wind of the ocean cold on the side of his face as without further warning he spun the wheel. In that instant he placed the position of all of them firmly in his mind, especially noting where Martha stood near the base of the mainmast. Monte made a querulous sound and Sam asked a question, and Dunning suddenly stopped his sobbing and laughed. It was too late for all of them. Too late for you, too, Carmody told himself. There was only the ghost of a chance that his scheme would work out the way he wanted it to work.

  Monte’s head snapped around and he saw what Carmody had seen all the time. Carmody had baited him. Directly ahead of the Apollo’s bows was the breakwater and the rocky surf that protected the yacht anchorage. It was as if all the rest of the world of land and sea were drowned in an infinite darkness, and only the blazing lights of the hotel and the yacht club were left to indicate that men were still alive on the dark shore. The Apollo seemed to leap forward with eagerness toward her destruction.

  In that moment Carmody saw them all clearly, and saw himself with even more clarity than the others. He saw Monte’s panic leading him to this last effort to escape, he saw Sam Link’s sly, quiet crookedness, his twisted cleverness giving him hope for one more chance; he saw Mark Dunning, the man who had killed the thing he loved the most, left with nothing to live for and yet clinging to life with a passionate determination to survive at whatever cost. But most of all, he saw that if he himself lived through this, which he doubted, there was only one thing he could do to atone for his past fears and long temporizing.

  Then Monte cursed and Sam Link screamed and Mark Dunning leaned back and laughed again. Monte and Sam leaped for him to tear the wheel from his hands. Carmody hit Sam and ducked under Monte’s swing and heard Sam’s gun go off. Martha cried out. He couldn’t see her and he felt the deck suddenly rise under him and Monte yelled and fired his gun blindly and groped for the wheel. Carmody drove the bearded man aside and felt Sam Link claw at his back and for an instant the three of them swayed back and forth while the wheel went spinning away of its own volition. For an instant then, Carmody straightened and saw the dark mass of land and rock looming up out of the night directly ahead. The air was filled with thunder. There was a sharp stinging pain in his left arm, high up near the shoulder, and he wondered if he had been hit by one of the stray bullets. Lights whirled on the horizon of the deck and there came a grinding, bumping, tearing sound under the sloop’s keel and a scream came up from the twisting timbers as if the Apollo herself were crying out in agony. The sloop lurched and Carmody felt his feet go out from under him and heard the thunder of a comber as he crashed on board the tilting vessel.

  The wall of water hit Carmody with its cold explosive force and drove him forward across the deck, sweeping everything in its way. He yelled and the water poured into his mouth and lungs. He staggered, choking and blinded, and felt the vessel lift again and slam down on the jagged teeth of the rocks. He yelled again, and this time he heard Martha answer him and he lunged toward her. The water roared up again, blinding black and white between them, and it knocked him down and he felt the edge of the scupper under his back. Somebody slid into him and he kicked at the man’s body, not knowing which of them it was. He got up a third time. The deck was tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Another comber burst in a fountain of spray against the sloop’s ravaged
sides. He saw Martha clinging to the mainmast and fought the sea to reach her and just as he caught her hand the Apollo lurched up once more and came down with a tremendous, shattering crash on the trap of rock. He heard Sam Link scream and he thought he heard Dunning’s laughter and he felt Martha’s cold wet fingers slip from his grip and then he was going down, into cold dark depths where there was no air, where the sea pushed and pulled and tugged and tore at him in its frenzy to crush him against the rocks.

  A trick of the tide swept him down and then outward and he fought with his mind and his arms and his legs against the cold water, struggling up and up until his lungs were bursting and he knew he would have to open his mouth and swallow air, but there would be no air, and the salt sea would rush into him and fill his lungs and his stomach and he would float down here forward, a toy of the sea. That would be the easy way, the simple way, and for a moment he almost opened his mouth and then he drove upward once more and couldn’t hold his straining lungs under control any longer and his lips parted and he sucked in through his clenched teeth and the miracle of cold air rushed into the agony of his chest.

  A roaring darkness surrounded him.

  He drew in a second breath of air and shouted through the insanity of the sea for Martha, and he heard her voice miraculously from somewhere to his left and he began to swim that way. Now he could see how the Apollo was hung up on the rocky promontory that served as the breakwater for the yacht anchorage, and he knew the sloop was dead, breaking up before his eyes as he swam toward the sound of Martha’s voice. He felt the drag of his shoes and his clothes but he did not dare stop to work them off. Something pale floated on the water before him and he saw it was Sam Link, his bald head still afloat, his face agonized in his effort to keep from being sucked under in the treacherous push and pull of the tidal current. Beyond Sam he saw Monte Bachore, too. They were all swimming, all but Mark Dunning. He worked past Sam and Sam tried to grab him and Carmody hit at him to drive him off and a wailing sound of despair came from the bald man. Pieces of wreckage floated in the water and Carmody pushed the broken stump of the main boom toward the other man and swam on.

  Martha’s voice called again and he saw her now, swimming easily with the current that swept around the farthest point of the ridge of rock. The tide was helping her as it flowed into the yacht basin. Carmody swam with all his might and caught up with her and then gasped, “Wait,” and ducked under the surface and fought with the wet laces of his shoes, sinking down and down perilously until at last he was able to kick off their impeding weight. Martha’s hands touched his face when he surfaced again.

  “Bill?”

  “Let’s swim,” Carmody said.

  “Where is Mark?”

  “I don’t think he wanted to swim,” Carmody said.

  Lights began to blaze at them from the shore and Carmody saw people scrambling eagerly about on the rocks, watching them as they struggled against the sea. Someone threw them a line, but it fell far short. He heard Sam Link screaming for help and looked once more for Mark Dunning, but all he saw was the broken wreckage of the Apollo as it slid at last in shattered fragments from the grip of the rocks and vanished under the raging spume and white fury of the breakers that dashed against the land. A flashlight swept the churning water ahead of them and Carmody saw the swift sucking surface of the sea as it swept around the point of rock and he grabbed at Martha’s hand and let the push of the water take them in sudden acceleration around the point and then settle them in a slowly slackening eddy behind the protection of the breakwater.

  Someone among the crowd of people on the shore threw them a line again and this time Carmody caught it and snaked it swiftly around his wrist and then he reached out for Martha and caught her arm. He felt himself being hauled slowly but steadily toward a tiny stretch of sandy beach in the lee of the breakwater. Something scraped his knee and he put his feet down and felt bottom, and the man at the other end of the line was over-eager and pulled him down into the water again before he could loosen the loops of line from around his wrist. Staggering and gasping, he helped Martha up and they splashed out of the water.

  A man threw a blanket around Martha and another man yelled something at Carmody and he sank to his knees and bent his head and rested, sucking air into his lungs. For an awful moment he thought he was going to pass out, and he felt the press of the crowd around him and saw that they were people from the hotel and then he saw among them the trim uniforms of the state police and he raised his head and stood up.

  “He’s one of them, all right,” someone said.

  He looked toward the voice that was acrid with hatred and saw it was Chief Hallowell, surrounded by the state troopers. Other cops were keeping the spectators back, and still another group was collected farther down the breakwater where Sam Link and Monte Bachore were being hauled out of the sea.

  Hallowell shouted, “This is the man that killed Mr. Sloade, lieutenant. We’ve been hunting him up and down the beach for the last two hours. He was trying to get away, and I guess somebody on that boat fooled him.”

  Carmody said, “You son of a bitch.”

  Hallowell swung at him and hit him in the stomach and Carmody sat down on the sand and felt the pain ebb and pulse in him and then he got up and Hallowell hit him in the face and in the stomach again and he fell down a second time and did not try to get up after that. Hallowell started to kick him and Martha screamed and then a lieutenant of the state police grabbed Hallowell and pulled him back into the angrily muttering crowd. The lieutenant was a grayhaired man with a tired, anxious face and a calm voice, and he hunkered down on the sand beside Carmody.

  “Are you William Carmody?”

  “Yes,” Carmody said.

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “Murder. Kidnapping. Conspiring to evade the gambling laws. Anything else you want to think of?”

  Carmody looked at Martha and smiled at her and saw that he had come to the end of a long road. There was strength and courage and reassurance in the girl’s eyes, and even more, and while he suddenly knew that what he had once hoped for was hopeless now and would always be hopeless, he still felt light and quick and almost happy as he answered the waiting lieutenant.

  “I didn’t do any of those things, officer. But I can tell you a lot about them.”

  17

  IT WAS quiet in the courthouse office. The county medical officer had come and gone and Carmody felt the sedative working in him and felt the rawness in his throat from all the talking he had done. The police stenographer had taken his statements and gone away with them to type them up and then he had gone over the whole thing again with the lieutenant. The lieutenant’s name was George Stone. His manner was cool but not unfriendly. He was simply businesslike. In the office, furnished with oak chairs and battered desk, Carmody had traveled far back into the past, into the days of Monte Bachore’s joint in New Jersey and the murder of the square and then through the days in the prison camp with Paul Sloade and Sam Link and Major Deegan. It seemed to him, as he talked, that Deegan was somewhere close by, listening and approving everything he said. And as he talked he felt the burden of his guilt lift from him and now all he wanted was to sleep. He had not seen Martha since the police took him from the beach. He knew nothing of what had happened to Monte or Sam or Markham Dunning. He almost didn’t care any more. He had tried to guess what the lieutenant thought of the things he was telling him but the lieutenant had smoked his stubby pipe and occasionally tamped the ashes down in it and swung around to look out through the courthouse windows at the lights of Matachogue.

  A turnkey came into the office and said, “We got a nice room fixed up for you, buddy.”

  Carmody got to his feet and looked at Stone. “Is that all, lieutenant?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Thanks for listening, anyway.”

  “It was quite interesting.”

  Carmody followed the turnkey down into the basement of the court
house where there were six cells in a row and the turnkey led him to the farthest cell and locked the door on him and Carmody sat down on the bunk and stared at the cement-block walls. Someone had given him a pair of old sneakers and dry pants that were too big for him and a chambray shirt. He sat there and smoked two cigarettes from the pack the lieutenant had given him and then he heard footsteps in the corridor and the lieutenant stood outside the barred door.

  “I thought I ought to ask you. Are you officially asking for trial as a state’s witness?”

  “I’m not asking for anything,” Carmody said.

  “But you’ll testify for the state?”

  “I’m testifying for myself,” Carmody said. “If it helps you or the D.A.’s office, that’s only incidental.”

  “I don’t figure you, Carmody.”

  “It’s easy to figure,” Carmody said. “I’ve lived with this thing too long. Now it’s off my mind.”

  “I put in a call to the D.A. about you, but we won’t get anything from him until morning. Is there anything I can get you?”

  “No, nothing, thanks.”

  Carmody slept for twelve hours and awoke for his meals and then slept through the day until it was evening again. Nobody came to see him. He asked the turnkey about Martha and the turnkey said he would find out for him, but then a different guard came on at supper time and the new guard didn’t know anything about it or wouldn’t tell him anything and Carmody slept through the next night, too.

  The following morning he was taken up to the same office where he had given Lieutenant Stone his statement. The district attorney was there and a lawyer named Jordan who identified himself as his defense attorney retained by Miss Courtney for him, and Carmody shook hands with the man and didn’t pay any attention to him again. He listened to what Stone had to say.

  “You’ve been a great help to us in all of this, Carmody. Frankly, I don’t think we’d have gotten it all straight if it hadn’t been for you. You might as well know now that we broke down Bachore and Sam Link and finally got stories that confirm your own. You might as well know, too, that Markham Dunning killed himself.”