Perchance to Dream (19 page)

    Sailor boy thought about it for a while and decided it wasn't worth the time. He shrugged and sauntered off down the pier to his boat. He sat in it while the geezer struggled down with the second block of ice, then he cranked it up and left the dock at full throttle, heading back toward the yacht.

    The geezer came back up from the landing. His face was red and he was puffing.

    I gave him a nod and a conspiratorial wink. He went on inside the shack. I waited. I'd been doing a lot of that lately. I hadn't done much of anything else lately, except occasionally to get whacked with a sap or threatened with a gun. Counting the ten I'd given the geezer to use his phone, I was at least nine dollars in the hole on this job. It wasn't the way to get rich.

    Five hundred yards away, Randolph's Ranger rode quietly at anchor, moving very slightly with the slow swells out beyond the surf line. The answers to a lot of questions rode out there on the swells. Maybe Carmen Sternwood, five hundred yards away, cute as a ladybug but far dumber, with the moral sense of an hyena. And here's Marlowe to the rescue. And Randolph Simpson, whom I'd never met but who appeared to be a mutilation murderer and a thief on a monumental scale, not to mention Bonsentir, and his Mexican and probably six pit vipers. A fine group, can't wait to join you. Perfect company. Marlowe the all-purpose guest, fits in easily with murderers and psychopaths, friend to all, close associate of Eddie Mars, gambler, gunman, all-around crook. The sky and sea were taking turns being bluer and the sun skipping off the whitecapped onshore waves made the air seem effervescent. A small yacht, a ketch, came around the point to the south and pulled in close to the shore and dropped anchor. A slender girl with a smooth tan and very blonde hair got into the dinghy they were towing and rowed toward shore. She had on white shorts and sneakers and a blue and white striped top and her sunglasses were so big they covered half her face. On the deck of the ketch I could see a blond young man dressed about the same, coiling the excess anchor rope and furling the mainsail. The girl bought some ice and a loaf of bread and other sundries and came back out carrying the purchases in a brown paper bag. The geezer nearly fell over himself carrying the ten-pound block of ice down to the dinghy for her. Her legs were perfectly smooth and the color of good sherry. She flashed a smile at the geezer that would have melted the ice if he'd still been carrying it. He made a ridiculous snaggle-toothed smile back, and she cast off from the landing and rowed back to her boat with short effortless strokes. The geezer and I both watched her until she was back aboard and the mainsail went up. The ketch moved slowly on, up the cove and around the point north of us and out of sight. We were alone again. Me, the geezer, and Randolph's Ranger.

    

    

    The two kids gave up on the fish and left. I watched them go, arguing with each other about who had the most near misses.

    Eddie Mars showed up about twenty minutes later. He had on a heavy white turtleneck sweater and a long-billed boating cap. Blondie was with him, looking especially pale and citified in the salt air and sand of the cove. He wore sunglasses and a tan garbardine wind-breaker. They parked the long black car on the pier and walked out toward the shack where I was homesteading.

    "Simpson out there?" Mars said with a nod toward the yacht.

    "I'm betting he is," I said.

    "I'm a gambling man myself," Mars said. "Got a boat coming."

    "How soon?"

    "Be patient, soldier, takes a little while. Let's all just settle back here in the sun and sip something cold."

    Blondie went into the shack and bought some ginger ale and went to the car and got a pint of good bourbon and brought it back and we poured it into paper cups that the geezer provided and added ginger ale and had a drink. The geezer looked at it like a drowning man eyes a lifeguard, but Mars ignored him.

    "I spent a little time thinking about how you found this place," Mars said, "and I figure you had to be tailing Bonsentir."

    "Yeah."

    "How long you been on him?"

    "About three days," I said.

    "No help?"

    "No."

    Mars shook his head and grinned. His grin had all the warmth of a pawnbroker examining your mother's diamond.

    "Got to hand it to you, soldier. You work at it."

    I had nothing much to say to that, so I let it pass and sipped a little of the bourbon and ginger ale. Out around the yacht some gulls rode easily on the waves, waiting for something to turn up. We sipped our drinks. Blondie made us a second one. We sipped some of that. Around the point from the north came a big cabin cruiser with a flying bridge and a swordfishing rig off the prow.

    "That's us," Mars said.

    It was no more noticeable than a crocodile in a bathtub.

    "Be no problem sneaking up on them," I said.

    "It's not that easy," Mars said, "to come up with a boat on short notice. This one belonged to a guy used it to smuggle before he got old. Got a lot of engine."

    The cabin cruiser churned in past Randolph's Ranger and slid up alongside the float at the foot of our pier.

    "All aboard," Mars said and finished his drink. We went on down the pier and down the ladder and onto the cabin cruiser. It was old, but it was well kept. The brass was polished and the teak and mahogany gleamed with years of hand-rubbing. At the wheel was a tall leathery specimen with a straw hat tilted way forward over the bridge of his nose. He held the boat easily against the landing float while we climbed on board. On board with him was the pug with the clubbed ear and broken nose that I'd seen before, and three other hard-looking characters that I didn't know. None of them looked like fishermen. Mars nodded at the helmsman and he eased the boat away from the pier with a deft movement of his hand. We were barely idling as the boat moved back toward the yacht.

    "You got a plan, soldier?" Mars was leaning on the rail with one hand in his pants pocket, thumb out, manicured nail gleaming.

    "We should sit offshore a little and wait. If they move we'll follow them. Otherwise, when it gets dark I'll go aboard."

    "Alone?"

    "Yeah. We all go aboard and it'll be a gunfight and I don't want Carmen caught in the middle."

    "She'd love it," Mars said, staring out at the water. "She'd giggle and suck her thumb and probably wet herself."

    "I wasn't hired to get her shot."

    "How much do you go for?"

    "This job, a dollar."

    Mars laughed.

    "Well, you earn your money, soldier."

    "Yeah. I can't wait to invest it."

    "How you planning to get over to the yacht?" Mars said.

    I nodded toward the skiff, stored upside down on the foredeck.

    "I figure someone can row me over."

    "And they'll pipe you aboard?"

    "Maybe they won't notice," I said. "Let's find out."

    Mars shrugged.

    "Keep the yacht in sight," he said to the helmsman in the hat. Then he went back to looking at the horizon. We idled south of the cove and hung off the point, staying steady against the wind. The yacht stayed put and the day dragged on, the minutes dawdled by like reluctant schoolchildren. Mars studied the horizon. I studied the yacht. The guy in the hat kept the bow into the wind, and the rest of the crew played cards. Marlowe and the pirates.

    From where we rested, I had a good view of Randolph's Ranger. The landing float at the back was still out, and the speedboat rode at a short tether beside it. It didn't look like they were going anywhere soon. On the deck occasionally a figure in white moved, circling the deck slowly without any apparent mission. All the action was belowdecks.

    The minutes continued to crawl past, pushing huge boulders ahead of them. The sun remained overhead it seemed forever, making no movement toward the west, getting no closer to the rim of the Pacific, hovering overhead while I waited.

    Once, late in the afternoon, the speedboat made a wake-curling run back into the shack for more ice, but that was all. The gulls bobbed patiently on the dull blue water. We hung motionless, in suspended animation, off the southern point of Fair Harbor until finally, as I was about to pass my ninety-fifth birthday, the sun disappeared, in fact quite suddenly, behind the horizon and darkness began.

    

    

    When it was as dark as it was going to get, we got the skiff into the water and Blondie got in to row me across.

    "He'll wait around, near where he puts you aboard," Mars said. "He'll be there when you're ready to come back."

    "Can he row?" I said.

    Blondie paid no attention to me. He was in the skiff with his hands resting on the oars.

    "Blondie's good," Mars said. "Don't underestimate him."

    "Sure he is, so am I. I'll go over, dance two numbers with Simpson, and be back with Carmen. They'll think pirates boarded."

    "How long before we come in and get you?" Mars said.

    "Use your judgment. But give me some time. Simpson has a private army everywhere he travels and you may not have enough firepower."

    Mars smiled his bleak smile at me.

    "We'll see, soldier. We'll see."

    I climbed down into the stern of the skiff and Blondie pulled easily on the oars and we slid quietly over the dark still water toward the yacht.

    

    

    It was not as dark as I would have liked. The stars were bright and a nearly full moon loomed over the black water and the motionless yacht. Blondie pulled the skiff expertly up against the landing platform. I could hear the faint sounds of what sounded like it might be revelry, though it could have been an ax murder in progress. The voices were indistinct. The calm water lapped gently against the hull of the yacht. I could hear nothing else. No sounds of sentries on the deck. I stepped out of the skiff onto the float, and Blondie pulled away without comment. I felt the reassuring weight of the gun in my shoulder holster, then moved softly up the ladder toward the deck. It was a balmy night, with just enough coolness stirring off the ocean to make everything fresh. The deck seemed empty when I stepped on it, but I knew I had seen someone in a sailor suit earlier, and I stayed motionless behind a bulkhead and listened. Only the sound of the water and the faint human voices from below. I waited. The rigging creaked faintly. Looking off toward Mars' cabin cruiser, I saw nothing. It was sitting with no lights, behind the point. I couldn't see Blondie in the skiff. From below I heard kind of a pealing giggle, much higher pitched than the other sounds, that had a chilling quality to it, like the shriek of someone wailing for her demon lover. Carmen! On deck suddenly I heard the gentle scuff of feet wearing sneakers. And then I saw him, in a white sailor suit, wearing a web belt, with a regulation side-arm. Just like the real Navy except for the sneakers. A little sleepy, bored with the endless circuit of the boat, he went by me without seeing me and continued on along the deck toward the bow. I went aft toward a hatchway and reached it and was inside, quicker than the passing of youth.

    Below, the sound of people talking came more clearly, and I could hear the clink of tableware. I went down another step, and then another, until I could see the corridor that ran, apparently, from bow to stern with compartments opening off of it. At the foot of the stairs, slightly forward, a compartment door was open and from there I heard the sound of voices. I went down the rest of the way and tried the knob on the compartment next door. It turned easily and when I stepped into the dark room I knew it was empty. An empty room feels different. It was as I'd hoped. Like many boats, ventilation grates were installed near the ceiling, connecting one room to another, relieving the closeness of belowdecks confinement with a little air circulation. The grate was open. I pulled a chair over and stood on it and looked through.

    They were all assembled, Bonsentir, Carmen Sternwood, and a tall, soft-looking guy with a lot of curly hair and big horn-rimmed glasses, who had to be Randolph Simpson. They were seated on cushions on the floor, gathered around a low table with an engraved brass top, eating with their fingers. What they were eating appeared to be some sort of grain with fruit mixed in. It looked messy to eat with your fingers, but none of them seemed to care. Carmen was wearing loose silk trousers and a silk figured top that left her middle uncovered. She didn't from where I was standing appear to have a jewel in her navel. She ate with one hand and with the other twirled wisps of Simpson's hair and then untwirled them. Clever girl, our Carmen. Never at a loss to be entertaining. She wore no shoes and her toenails had been painted blue. Occasionally she would stop twirling Simpson's hair long enough to feed a small morsel to a yellow tiger kitten who would lick her fingers eagerly each time and then be disappointed in what he found and sit back and meow. Simpson wore a flowered shirt hanging outside of white duck pants. Bonsentir wore the same white linen suit I'd seen when he left Resthaven this morning. He leaned across the table and poured some reddish liquid into Carmen's glass from a crystal flagon. She drank some and giggled.

    Her eyes were very wide and almost all pupil. And there was a sick bubbly sound to the giggle that went very well with the faint medicinal smell that drifted through the vent from the room. There were silk brocade hangings around the room and a bunch of flowering plants in big pots here and there. Simpson was staring at Bonsentir, and it was his voice that I heard, deep and full of overtones, like a B-movie version of God speaking from the clouds.