The Intimidators (10 page)

“Friendly? That thug? And would he make himself conspicuous with that long hair, if he were an undercover cop?” She wrinkled her nose to indicate distaste. “I think it’s really a mistake for men to wear it long, even if it’s considered very fashionable in some circles nowadays. They either look too pretty, like fairies, or they just look repulsive, like him. I mean, that enormous man—I saw him on foot yesterday, and he’s almost as tall as you and a lot wider—with that tough, tough face and those flowing damn locks! He gives me the creeps every time I see him!”

Our drinks had arrived. I said, “To hell with his flowing locks. Drink up and tell me about Harlan Enos Rockwell, known as Harley. And his boat. Start with the boat.”

She said, “Well, it was actually designed as a kind of daysailer and weekender, you know, with a big cockpit and a rudimentary cabin and galley, but Harley got a bargain he couldn’t afford to pass up—the company was going out of business—so he bought the shell and fixed it up the way he wanted it. Actually, it was a solid little sloop with good sturdy lines, not one of these light-displacement, fin-keel, spade-rudder monstrosities they’re building nowadays to sail so fast, fast, fast; and it takes three strong men at the helm to hold them going downwind in a breeze because they’ve got no directional stability whatever—”

I grinned. “Okay, doll, you’ve impressed me. Light displacement directional instability, yet! I can guess at fin keel, but what the hell is a spade rudder? It sounds like a naughty ethnic term to me.... So he took what was essentially a sheltered-water boat and beefed it up.”

“That’s not quite right, Matt. Harley saw that the basic design had good deepwater possibilities, although of course the rig was too light and the cockpit was much too big—one boarding wave and goodbye, particularly since there was no bridge deck and the main hatch originally fitted was a big, flimsy affair that could easily give way and let the whole ocean below to swamp the boat in really heavy weather....”

I listened to a lot more of this, understanding a bit here and there, although I’m even less expert on sailboats than I am on motorboats. It was fun just the same. I mean, a pretty girl discoursing seriously about centers of effort and centers of resistance and storm trysails and sea anchors is always fun. If you simply have to acquire a nautical education, I can’t think of a nicer way to get it. The gist of her lecture was that her young brother, an experienced offshore sailor, had done everything possible to redesign and rebuild his little bargain vessel to be as strong and seaworthy as its size, and his finances, permitted.

“He wasn’t quite happy about the outboard motor he had to use for auxiliary power, but
Star Trek
wasn’t designed for an inboard installation, and he couldn’t afford it, anyway,” she said. “But otherwise she was a very sound little ship, Matt. And Harley was a fine seaman. I mean, really. If you’re thinking of a crazy, reckless kid heading offshore in a totally unsuitable cockleshell.... It wasn’t that way at all. He’d studied all the others, from Slocum on. He’d planned the voyage for years. He had everything worked out to the last drop of drinking water and scrap of canvas....”

The local ocean seemed to be full of expert, missing sailors. Probably, when we got the inside dope, we’d learn that the vanished Sir James Marcus, or his hired captain, was also a meticulously careful seagoing genius.

“Description,” I said.

“What?” She looked at me over her glass. “Oh. Well, Harley was blond and good-looking, not very tall but well built, with blue eyes. Very sunburned, of course. He’d been months outdoors working on the boat in the yard in Connecticut where he’d been helping out in return for the use of their space and tools. He’d brought
Star Trek
down the Intracoastal Waterway and spent the last few weeks at the Faro Blanco Marina down in the Keys running the final tests before.... What’s the matter?”

“
What
did you say?” I asked, staring at her.

“I said he’d spent the last few weeks in the Florida Keys making sure everything—”

“No,” I said. “That marina. What was the name of it?”

“Why,” she said, “it was called Faro Blanco, whatever that may mean....” She stopped, her voice trailing off into silence. I didn’t say anything. Lacey licked her lips. “Have I been stupid, Matt? Blanco means white, of course, but it never occurred to me.... Faro is a card game they used to play in the old Wild West, isn’t it? I... I figured it meant a white ace or joker or something. I guess I never really thought much about it.”

I said, “Faro is Spanish for lighthouse, Miss Rockwell.”

“Oh, dear,” she said softly. “Oh, dear! If I bend over will you kick me hard? Very hard? Right out into the middle of that canal, please? When I think of all the money I paid that pilot to fly me around looking at all those silly buoys and beacons—”

“Just exactly what did your brother say in that last phone call?”

She paused to think back. “Well, he’d called from Nassau to say goodbye,” she said at last. “He was finally shoving off on the first leg of the great adventure. Everything up to that had been just preparation and practice. Now he was going to head offshore for real. His first stop, he said, would be Charlotte Amalie, on St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. There are easier ways of getting there, like working down the Bahamas first, in relatively sheltered waters, with harbors handy in case of trouble, but he was going to head for open water and to hell with the prevailing winds; it would be a final test of the boat, not to mention his navigation.” She drew a long breath. “I didn’t really worry at first. I mean, it’s a thousand miles from Nassau down to the Virgins; and the breezes all blow the wrong way. Working a small boat to windward you could easily cover more than twice that distance and maybe not average fifty miles a day. At least... at least that was what I kept telling myself, Matt.”

“Your brother had no radio?” I said.

“He had a good transistorized receiving set working on flashlight batteries for weather reports and news and entertainment, but no transmitting equipment. I told you, he used a little outboard for auxiliary power; he had no way of keeping a storage-battery charged.... When it got into fall and the hurricane season, I began getting anxious. I knew he’d planned to be out of the Caribbean, heading for the Panama Canal, by that time. Finally.... Well, I just quit my job in New York and came down here. I had a little money saved up—”

“Let’s go back to that phone call,” I said. “He told you he’d call from this Charlotte Something-or-other place?”

“Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas. Yes. He said he’d call if he could; if not, he’d certainly write. He was about to hang up; and then he hesitated and said....” She frowned, and went on after a moment: “I’m trying to remember just how he put it. I think he said that he’d run into something funny he’d better not talk about over the phone, but that if anything should happen to him, I might do a little checking around the white light—” She spread her hands helplessly. “He stopped right there, as if he’d changed his mind. Afterwards, trying to remember, I couldn’t be sure whether he’d actually said lighthouse, or if I’d just got the impression that was what he’d intended to say. Anyway, he was silent for a bit; then he went on: ‘Ah, forget it, Sis. I’m probably just imagining things. I’ll call or write from St. Thomas. Be good.’ ” She drew a long, ragged breath. “Harley was always telling me to be good, as if he were the older one instead of me.”

There was a little silence. At last I said, “He was really planning to sail clear around the world?”

“Yes. Through the Panama Canal and down into the romantic South Seas full of beautiful dancing girls with grass skirts.... No, damn it, I won’t make fun of it, and I won’t let you make it sound foolish, either! Hundreds of small boats have done it since Slocum, why shouldn’t he? Would you think it smarter if he’d stayed on shore and fulfilled his dreams with marihuana or heroin?”

“No criticism or ridicule was intended,” I said.

This wasn’t quite true, of course. I mean, after all, the damned world is twenty-four thousand miles around. In a small sailboat jiggling and rocking and splashing along at fifty miles per day, or even a hundred, that’s not a voyage, that’s practically a career. My Scandinavian ancestors may have been seafaring folk, but that was a long time ago; and while I enjoy fishing, I’m not all that crazy about water. As far as I’m concerned, when you’ve seen one ocean you’ve seen them all.

Lacey didn’t speak. I said, “Okay, so much for the lesson in seamanship and navigation and boat-building and stuff. It’s been very educational; and I guess we’d better plan on taking a look at that Faro Blanco place. However, that’s a couple of hundred miles away, back across the Gulf Stream in the good old U.S. of A. Before we leave Nassau, it seems to me there’s a bit of unfinished business we’d better attend to. Something you’ve been very careful to avoid mentioning either to me or to the cops; and a snoopy journalistic character can’t help but wonder why.”

She didn’t look at me. “I... I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure,” I said. “You just rented a bike and took your camera and went sightseeing. You just happened to be in a certain place when a certain unsavory character just happened to wander by with a gun....”

“It was a phone call,” she said. “A woman. She called me at the hotel. She asked if I was the young lady who'd lost something at sea. She said if I was interested in getting it back, I should be on the orchestra platform in the Royal Victoria gardens at two o’clock the following day. She said for me to put on something white with a blue scarf—I could wear that any way I liked just so it showed—and somebody would get in touch with me. She said... she said the relative about whom I was concerned had got into serious legal difficulties down in the Caribbean, and if I ever wanted to see him again, I’d better be careful not to call his predicament to the attention of the local authorities any more than I’d already done by my blundering inquiries.” She hesitated, and went on: “That was why I was willing to do, well, practically anything, Matt, to keep the police from asking me any more questions.... The woman never gave me a name. I don’t see how we can trace her. I’m sure I’d never heard her voice before.”

“Was it a British or a Yankee voice?”

“I’d say American, but refined. Eastern seaboard, maybe a little south but not very. What do you think we ought to do?”

“Well,” I said judiciously, “right now I think we should concentrate very hard and decide what wine goes best with this roast duck with oranges they’ve got listed on the menu....”

The food, when it arrived, restored my faith in the culinary abilities of the Bahamians; and I added the Café Martinique to my list of such establishments as Stallmästaregården in Stockholm, Sweden, and La Louisianne in San Antonio, Texas; the ones where even an ignorant meat-and-potatoes type like me can luck into a superlative meal. Afterwards we had coffee and brandy—well, she had something sweet and ladylike—and it was time to go. Outside, it was very dark. There were no cabs in the treelined driveway.

“I’d better go back in and get the doorman to call one,” I said.

“No, let’s walk up to the casino and see what it looks like,” she said. “The taxi-driver said there were plenty of cabs up there, remember?”

I said, “Look, sweetheart, you’re the little girl who came to me for protection. My opinion, as a not-very-expert bodyguard, is that midnight strolls through the woods are not recommended; and as a matter of fact, just standing out here under these damned lights isn’t really the brightest idea in the world—”

“Now you’re being stuffy and tiresome,” she said. “Come on.”

I shrugged, and followed her up the paved path through the trees, toward the large, lighted building up the hill, that seemed to serve as a sizable hotel as well as a gambling joint. Lagging a little, I could see her white dress ahead of me in the dusk.

“Matt—”

Her voice was interrupted by a shrill, warning whistle from among the trees. Expecting it, I threw myself flat Lacey was turning, her hand drawing something small and shiny from her white purse, and pointing it at me. I rolled aside, and the little pistol followed me, steadying. I brought up against the bushes at the side of the path and had nowhere else to go, and nothing to do but wait for her shot. Then a heavy firearm opened up from the darkness to the left and cut her down.

I drew a long breath, picked myself up, and walked forward slowly, brushing myself off. There was a rustle in the bushes. I looked that way. Black men have it all over us light-faced gents when it comes to operating in the dark. I could hardly make out Fred standing there. A large revolver, rather oddly proportioned by American handgun standards, gleamed in his hand: a husky old .455 Webley, at a guess.

“Okay, Eric?” he whispered.

“I’m okay,” I said, “but what’s the matter with you, buck fever or something? You cut it damned close. The whistle was okay, but the gun was way slow. The next time, please let me know that you have qualms about burning down pretty young potential murderesses; and I’ll get somebody to cover me who doesn’t!” He didn’t speak. I drew another long breath, still not quite steady, and said, “Excuse it, please. I spoke in the heat of the moment. Forget it. Now you’d better beat it before the mob arrives. Oh, take this with you.” I knelt and freed the little automatic pistol from the fingers of the fallen girl and handed it to him. “Ditch it deep,” I said. “It never existed. Report to Washington right away and check with me later.”

“Yes,
sir
.”

The exaggerated respectfulness indicated that he disapproved of me or my orders or something. Well, I wasn’t very happy with him at the moment; he’d damn near let me be killed. He was good in the dark, though; I had to hand him that. He simply vanished. One moment he was there; the next, I was looking at nothing but shadowy bushes and trees. I could hear voices both above and below as people milled around asking each other where the loud noise had come from. The white, small figure on the ground stirred painfully.

“Matt?” she whispered.