Live and Let Die: A James Bond Novel (14 page)

Bond and Leiter walked past him and on to the pier. He didn’t look up from his rifle as they went past but Bond sensed that his eyes were following them.

‘If that isn’t The Robber,’ said Leiter, Ht’s a blood relation.’

A pelican, grey with a pale yellow head, was hunched on one of the mooring posts at the end of the jetty. He let them get very close, then reluctantly gave a few heavy beats of his wings and planed down towards the water. The two men stood and watched him flying slowly along just above the surface of the harbour. Suddenly he crashed clumsily down, his long bill snaking out and down in front of him. It came up clutching a small fish which he moodily swallowed. Then the heavy bird got up again and went on fishing, flying mostly into the sun so that its big shadow would give no warning. When Bond and Leiter turned to walk back down the jetty it gave up fishing and glided back to its post. It settled with a clatter of wings and resumed its thoughtful consideration of the late afternoon.

The man was still bent over his gun, wiping the mechanism with an oily rag.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Leiter. ‘You the manager of this wharf?’

‘Yep,’ said the man without looking up.

‘Wondered if there was any chance of mooring my boat here. Basin’s pretty crowded.’

‘Nope.’

Leiter took out his notecase. ‘Would twenty talk?’

‘Nope.’ The man gave a rattling hawk in his throat and spat directly between Bond and Leiter.

‘Hey,’ said Leiter. ‘You want to watch your manners.’

The man deliberated. He looked up at Leiter. He had small, close-set eyes as cruel as a painless dentist’s. x ‘What’s a name of your boat?’

‘The Sybil,’ said Leiter.

‘Ain’t no sich boat in the Basin,’ said the man. He clicked the breech shut on his rifle. It lay casually on his lap pointing down the approach to the warehouse, away from the sea.

‘You’re blind,’ said Leiter. ‘Been there a week. Sixty-foot twin-screw Diesel. White with a green awning. Rigged for fishing.’

The rifle started to move lazilv in a low arc. The man’s left hand was at the trigger, his right just in front of the trigger-guard, pivoting the gun.

They stood still.

The man sat lazily looking down at the breech, his chair still tilted against the small door with the yellow Yale lock.

The gun slowly traversed Leiter’s stomach, then Bond’s. The two men stood like statues, not risking a move of the hand. The gun stopped pivoting. It was pointing down the wharf. The Robber looked briefly up, narrowed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The pelican gave a fault squawk and they heard its heavy body crash into the water. The echo of the shot boomed across the harbour.

‘What the hell d’you do that for?’ asked Bond furiously.

‘Practice,’ said the man, pumping another bullet into the breech.

‘Guess there’s a branch of the ASPCA in this town,’ said Leiter. ‘Let’s get along there and report this guy.’

‘Want to be prosecuted for trespass?’ asked The Robber, getting slowly up and shifting the gun under his arm. ‘This is private property. Now,’ he spat the words out, ‘git the hell out of here.’ He turned and yanked the chair away from the door, opened the door with a key and turned with one foot on the threshold. ‘You both got guns,’ he said. ‘I kin smell ‘em. You come aroun’ here again and you follow the boid ‘n I plead self-defence. I’ve had a bellyful of you lousy dicks aroun’ here lately breathin’ down my neck. Sybil my ass!’ He turned contemptuously through the door and slammed it so that the frame rattled.

They looked at each other. Leiter grinned ruefully and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Round One to The Robber,’ he said.

They moved off down the dusty sideroad. The sun was setting and the sea behind them was a pool of blood. When they got to the main road, Bond looked back. A big arc light had come on over the door and the approach to the warehouse was stripped of shadows.

‘No good trying anything from the front,’ said Bond. ‘But there’s never been a warehouse with only one entrance.’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Leiter. ‘We’ll save that for the next visit.’

They got into the car and drove slowly home across

Central Avenue

.

On their way home Leiter asked a string of questions about Solitaire. Finally he said casually: ‘By the way, hope I fixed the rooms like you want them.’

‘Couldn’t be better,’ said Bond cheerfully.

‘Fine,’ said Leiter. ‘Just occurred to me you two might be hyphenating.’

‘You read too much Winchell,’ said Bond.

‘It’s just a delicate way of putting it,’ said Leiter. ‘Don’t forget the walls of those cottages are pretty thin. I use my ears for hearing with - not for collecting lip-stick.’

Bond grabbed for a handkerchief. ‘You lousy, goddam sleuth,’ he said furiously.

Leiter watched him scrubbing at himself out of the corner of his eye. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked innocently. ‘I wasn’t for a moment suggesting the colour of your ears was anything but a natural red. However…’ He put a wealth of meaning into the word.

‘If you find yourself dead in your bed tonight,’ laughed Bond, ‘you’ll know who did it.’

They were still chaffing each other when they arrived at The Everglades and they were laughing when the grim Mrs. Stuyvesant greeted them on the lawn.

‘Pardon me, Mr. Leiter,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid we can’t allow music here. I can’t have the other guests disturbed at all hours.’

They looked at her in astonishment. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Stuyvesant,’ said Leiter. ‘I don’t quite get you.’

‘That big radiogram you had sent round,’ said Mrs. Stuyvesant. ‘The men could hardly get the packing-case through the door.’

Live and Let Die

CHAPTER XIV

‘HE DISAGREED WITH SOMETHING THAT ATE HIM’

THE girl had not put up much of a struggle. When Leiter and Bond, leaving the manageress gaping on the lawn, raced down to the end cottage, they found her room untouched and the bedclothes barely rumpled.

The lock of her room had been forced with one swift wrench of a jemmy and then the two men must have just stood there with guns in their hands.

‘Get going, Lady. Get your clothes on. Try any tricks and we’ll let the fresh air into you.’

Then they must have gagged her or knocked her out and doubled her into the packing-case and nailed it up. There were tyre-marks at the back of the cottage where the truck had stood. Almost blocking the entrance hall was a huge old-fashioned radiogram. Second-hand it must have cost them under fifty bucks.

Bond could see the expression of blind terror on Solitaire’s face as if she was standing before him. He cursed himself bitterly for leaving her alone. He couldn’t guess how she had been traced so quickly. It was just another example of The Big Man’s machine.

Leiter was talking to the FBI headquarters at

Tampa

. ‘Airports, railroad terminals and the highways,’ he was saying. ‘You’ll get blanket orders from

Washington

just as soon as I’ve spoken to them. I guarantee they’ll give this top priority. Thanks a lot. Much appreciated. I’ll be around. Okay.’

He hung up. ‘Thank God they’re co-operating,’ he said to Bond, who was standing gazing with hard blank eyes out to sea. ‘Sending a couple of their men round right away and throwing as wide a net as they can. While I sew this up with

Washington

and

New York

, get what you can from that old battle-axe. Exact time, descriptions, etc. Better make out it was a burglary and that Solitaire has skipped with the men. She’ll understand that. It’ll keep the whole thing on the level of the usual hotel crimes. Say the police are on the way and that we don’t blame The Everglades. She’ll want to avoid a scandal. Say we feel the same way.’

Bond nodded. ‘Skipped with the men?’ That was possible too. But somehow he didn’t think so. He went back to Solitaire’s room and searched it minutely. It still smelled of her, of the ‘Vent Vert’ that reminded him of their journey together. Her hat and veil were in the cupboard and her few toilet articles on the shelf in the bathroom. He soon found her bag and knew that he was right to have trusted her. It was under the bed and he visualized her kicking it there as she got up with the guns trained on her. He emptied it out on the bed and felt the lining. Then he took out a small knife and carefully cut a few threads. He took out the five thousand dollars and slipped them into his pocket-book. They would be safe with him. If she was killed by Mr. Big, he would spend them on avenging her. He covered up the torn lining as best he could, replaced the other contents of the bag and kicked it back under the bed.

Then he went up to the office.

It was

eight o’clock

by the time the routine work was finished. They had a stiff drink together and then went to the central dining-room, where the handful of other guests were just finishing their dinner. Everyone looked curiously and rather fearfully at them. What were these two rather dangerous-looking young men doing in this place? Where was the woman who had come with them? Whose wife was she? What had all those goings on meant that evening? Poor Mrs. Stuyvesant running about looking quite distracted. And didn’t they realize that dinner was at

seven o’clock

? The kitchen staff would be just going home. Serve them right if their food was quite cold. People must have consideration for others. Mrs. Stuyvesant had said she thought they were government men, from

Washington

. Well, what did that mean?

The consensus of opinion was that they were bad news and no credit to the carefully restricted clientele of The Everglades.

Bond and Leiter were shown to a bad table near the service door. The set dinner was a string of inflated English and pidgin French. What it came down to was tomato juice, boiled fish with a white sauce, a strip of frozen turkey with a dab of cranberry, and a wedge of lemon curd surmounted by a whorl of stiff cream substitute. They munched it down gloomily while the dining-room emptied of its oldster couples and the table lights went out one by one. Fingerbowls, in which floated one hibiscus petal, was the final gracious touch to their meal.

Bond ate silently and when they had finished Leiter made a determined effort to be cheerful.

‘Come and get drunk,’ he said. ‘This is the bad end to a worse day. Or do you want to play bingo with the oldsters? It says there’s a bingo tournament in the “romp room” this evening.’

Bond shrugged his shoulders and they went back to their sitting-room and sat gloomily for a while, drinking and staring out across the sand, bonewhite in the light of the moon, towards the endless dark sea.

When Bond had drunk enough to drown his thoughts he said good night and went off to Solitaire’s room, which he had now taken over as his bedroom. He climbed between the sheets where her warm body had lain and, before he slept, he had made up his mind. He would go after The Robber as soon as it was light and strangle the truth out of him. He had been too preoccupied to discuss the .case with Leiter but he was certain that The Robber must have had a big hand in the kidnapping of Solitaire. He thought of the man’s little cruel eyes and the pale thin lips. Then “he thought of the scrawny neck rising like a turtle’s out of the dirty sweat-shirt. Under the bedclothes the muscles of his arms went taut. Then, his mind made up, he relaxed his body into sleep.

He slept until eight. When he saw the time on his watch he cursed. He quickly took a shower, holding his eyes open into the needles of water until they smarted. Then he put a towel round his waist and went into Leiter’s room. The slats of the jalousies were still down but there was light enough to see that neither bed had been slept in.

He smiled, thinking that Leiter had probably finished the bottle of whisky and fallen asleep on the couch in the living-room. He walked through. The room was empty. The bottle of whisky, still half full, was on the table and a pile of cigarette butts overflowed the ash-tray.

Bond went to the window, pulled up the jalousies and opened it. He caught a glimpse of a beautiful clear morning before he turned back into the room.

Then he saw the envelope. It was on a chair in front of the door through which he had come. He picked it up. It contained a note scribbled in pencil.

Got to thinking and don’t feel like sleep. It’s about

five a.m.

Going to visit the worm-and-bait store. All same early bird. Odd that trick-shot artist was sitting there while S. was being snatched. As if he knew we were in town and was ready for trouble in case the snatch went wrong. If I’m not back by ten, call out the militia.

Tampa

88. FELIX

Bond didn’t wait. While he shaved and dressed he ordered some coffee and rolls and a cab. In just over ten minutes he had got them all and had scalded himself with the coffee. He was leaving the cottage when he heard the telephone ring in the living-room. He ran back.

‘Mr. Bryce?

Mound

Park

Hospital

speaking,’ said a voice. ‘Emergency ward. Doctor Roberts. We have a Mr. Leiter here who’s asking for you. Can you come right over?’

‘God Almighty,’ said Bond, gripped with fear. ‘What’s the matter with him. Is he bad?’

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said the voice. ‘Automobile accident. Looks like a hit-and-run job. Slight concussion. Can you come over? He seems to want you.’

‘Of course,’ said Bond, relieved. ‘Be there right away.’

Now what the hell, he wondered as he hurried across the lawn. Must have been beaten up and left in the road. On the whole, Bond was glad it was no worse.

As they turned across Treasure Island Causeway an ambulance passed them, its bell clanging.

More trouble, thought Bond. Don’t seem to be able to move without running into it.

They crossed

St. Petersburg

by

Central Avenue

and turned right down the road he and Leiter had taken the day before. Bond’s suspicions seemed to be confirmed when he found the hospital was only a couple of blocks from Ourobouros Inc.

Bond paid off the cab and ran up the steps of the impressive building. There was a reception desk in the spacious entrance hall. A pretty nurse sat at the desk reading the ads in the St. Petersburg Times.

‘Dr. Roberts?’ inquired Bond.

‘Dr. which?’ asked the girl looking at him with approval.

‘Dr. Roberts, Emergency ward,’ said Bond impatiently. ‘Patient called Leiter, Felix Leiter. Brought in this morning.’

‘No doctor called Roberts here,’ said the girl. She ran a finger down a list on the desk. ‘And no patient called Leiter. Just a moment and I’ll call the ward. What did you say your name was?’

‘Bryce,’ said Bond. ‘John Bryce.’ He started to sweat profusely although it was quite cool in the hall. He wiped his wet hands on his trousers, fighting to keep from panic. The damn girl just didn’t know her job. Too pretty to be a nurse. Ought to have someone competent on the desk. He ground his teeth as she talked cheerfully into the telephone.

She put down the receiver. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Bryce. Must be some mistake. No cases during the night and they’ve never heard of a Dr. Roberts or a Mr. Leiter. Sure you’ve got the right hospital?’

Bond turned away without answering her. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he made for the exit.

The girl made a face at his back and picked up her paper.

Mercifully, a cab was just drawing up with some other visitors. Bond took it and told the driver to get him back quick to The Everglades. All he knew was that they had got Leiter and had wanted to draw Bond away from the cottage. Bond couldn’t make it out, but he knew that suddenly everything was going bad on them and that the initiative was back in the hands of Mr. Big and his machine.

Mrs. Stuyvesant hurried out when she saw him leave the cab.

‘Your poor friend,’ she said without sympathy. ‘Really he should be more careful.’

‘Yes, Mrs. Stuyvesant. What is it?’ said Bond impatiently.

‘The ambulance came just after you left.’ The woman’s eyes were gleaming with the bad news. ‘Seems Mr. Leiter was in an accident with his car. They had to carry him to the cottage on a stretcher. Such a nice coloured man was in charge. He said Mr. Leiter would be quite all right but he mustn’t be disturbed on any account. Poor boy! Face all covered with bandages. They said they’d make him comfortable and a doctor would be coming later. If there’s anything I can…’

Bond didn’t wait for more. He ran down the lawn to the cottage and dashed through the lobby into Leiter’s room.

There was the shape of a body on Leiter’s bed. It was covered with a sheet. Over the face, the sheet seemed to be motionless.

Bond gritted his teeth as he leant over the bed. Was there a tiny flutter of movement?

Bond snatched the shroud down from the face. There was no face. Just something wrapped round and round with dirty bandages, like a white wasps’ nest.

He softly pulled the sheet down further. More bandages, still more roughly wound, with wet blood seeping through. Then the top of a sack which covered the lower half of the body. Everything soaked in blood.

There was a piece of paper protruding from a gap in the bandages where the mouth should have been.

Bond pulled it away and leant down. There was the faintest whisper of breath against his cheek. He snatched up the bedside telephone. It took minutes before he could make

Tampa

understand. Then the urgency in his voice got through. They would get to him in twenty minutes.

He put down the receiver and looked vaguely at the paper in his hand. It was a rough piece of white wrapping paper. Scrawled in pencil in ragged block letters were the words:

HE DISAGREED WITH SOMETHING THAT ATE HIM

And underneath in brackets :

(P.S. WE HAVE PLENTY MORE JOKES AS GOOD AS THIS)

With the movements of a sleep-walker, Bond put the piece of paper down on the bedside table. Then he turned back to the body on the bed. He hardly dared touch it for fear that the tiny fluttering breath would suddenly cease. But he had to find out something. His fingers worked softly at the bandages on top of the head. Soon he uncovered some of the strands of hair. The hair was wet and he put his fingers to his mouth. There was a salt taste. He pulled out some strands of hair and looked closely at them. There was no more doubt.

He saw again the pale straw-coloured mop that used to hang down in disarray over the right eye, grey and humorous, and below it the wry, hawk-like face of the Texan with whom he had shared so many adventures. He thought of him for a moment, as he had been. Then he tucked the lock of hair back into the bandages and sat on the edge of the other bed and quietly watched over the body of his friend and wondered how much of it could be saved.