Murderers' Row (20 page)

We leaned forward together, peering out. There was nothing to be seen except darkness and water—black, foam-flecked water, hissing past. We were traveling faster than we'd gone all day.

“She's really pouring the oil to that diesel,” I said. “Just how far can she run in this direction before piling up?” Teddy didn't answer. I glanced at her, and saw that her elation had faded as suddenly as it had come. Her face was quite white. “What's the matter, kid?” I asked.

Teddy licked her lips. “She's going to try the channel. She—she'll kill us all!”

“Channel?” I said. “What channel?” Then I remembered that Robin herself had said something about a tidal channel between the island and the mainland. She'd also mentioned a mile of shoals, I recalled.

Teddy said dully, “It's very simple. She's just going to take ten feet of draft through an eight-foot channel at fourteen knots, that's all. Listen! They're running up the foresail again. They had it down for a while.”

“Translate,” I said. “Never mind the damn sail. What's this about eight feet and ten feet?”

“Well, the channel's supposed to be eight feet at mean low water. If the tide is high, she may have ten or even twelve, but even so—”

“So she
could
make it?”

“No, you don't understand!” she protested. “It's a narrow channel; it isn't dredged; it isn't buoyed; it just goes where the tide goes. It changes with every storm. It says eight feet on the chart, but that doesn't mean anything. There could be a sandbar clear across it tomorrow—or tonight!”

“Skip the could-be's,” I said. “Obviously she thinks she's got a chance or she wouldn't try it. But suppose she does, what does it get her? I mean, this is just a glorified sailboat, after all. You said fourteen knots just now, and she's giving it everything she's got—sail, power, everything. Right?”

“Yes, but—”

“But, hell!” I said. “I don't know much about boats, but I do know that fourteen knots is nothing, even on the water. A knot is only a fraction over a mile per hour, isn't it? A fast twin-screw cruiser can do forty and better, can't it? We've been spotted and somebody's chasing us, obviously. If it's the Marines or the Coast Guard, they're going to have something reasonably speedy, aren't they? They aren't apt to be patrolling the area in a rowboat. Even if Mrs. Rosten makes it out through the channel at a lousy fourteen knots, she'll be run down in a couple of miles, won't she?”

“You don't understand!” Teddy said plaintively. There seemed to be a lot I didn't understand. “There's a gale blowing out there already; it will be worse before morning. You heard Louis. On a reasonably calm day, any little outboard motorboat could catch us, but the
Freya
is a seagoing schooner, Matt! She's built to stay out and take it. Very few powerboats are, certainly not here on the Bay. Nobody's going to chase us at forty knots in this weather, or fourteen knots, either. Not out past the shelter of Mendenhall Island, they aren't. In a wind like this, no small craft is going to catch an eighty-foot schooner on a reach, as long as the masts stay in her.”

“I see,” I said. “So once the lady gets clear of the land, she's home free.”

Teddy nodded. “Unless the Navy gets a destroyer out of Norfolk to look for her; and with the tail end of a hurricane to hide in, she has a very good chance of slipping out to sea, anyway, radar or no radar. Getting back home again after the weather has cleared will be another matter, but that won't help us a bit.” She glanced at the porthole and gulped. “That is, assuming she can get us through that silly little channel. If she can't she'll drown us all!”

“I knew I should have learned to swim better,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, and remembered she didn't trust me, and drew away a little. “It doesn't matter much does it? We aren't any of us going to swim very far, in here with the door locked.”

The schooner gave a sudden lurch, throwing us against the bunk. It wasn't anything, just a gust of wind; she rose again, shuddering and vibrating, driving hard towards the unseen channel ahead, fleeing the unknown threat astern. I had a mental picture of my cruel pirate queen at the wheel. Big Nick would be forward as lookout, maybe out on the bowsprit, scanning the water ahead. Loeffler and his unidentified associate would be huddled in whatever shelter they could find against the spray, commending their souls to some Marxist god, unless they were better sailors than I thought...

The kid did something that caught my attention, I didn't quite know why. She'd been bending over the bunk to help her father, who'd slid down on top of Louis, to leeward; and suddenly she'd done something quick and sneaky. Now she was turning away guiltily, hiding something. I grabbed her and swung her around. Her hand came up, striking at me with something, in a panicky way. I parried the blow and got the thing away from her. It was a rusty wrench.

I stared at the wrench for a moment. Then I looked at Teddy, who was rubbing her bruised wrist.

“It was—in Louis' sock,” she said, glaring at me. “You didn't have to break my arm!”

I didn't bother to ask why she'd tried to hide it. The answer was in her face. She'd been going to wait until my back was turned and slug me with it, after which, presumably, she'd have rescued Papa somehow, from me as well as from the people on deck.

I looked at Louis. The rolling around had worked his pants leg up towards the knee, but of course I should have looked there when I first searched him. I'd had hours to go over him thoroughly, but I'd taken for granted there wasn't anything to find. I'd assumed that he'd never really meant to get us anything useful, that he hadn't had time, or even if he'd got it, that he'd told all about it and had it taken away from him.

I'd made the mistake that's so easy to make in this business: I'd sold a guy short because I didn't trust him or like him. Louis had given me what I'd asked for. He'd even kept quiet about it through a brutal third degree. I'd passed it up because I'd been too smart to really look for it.

Well, it was no time to start counting my shortcomings; that would have to wait until I had a week or two to spare. The funny thing was that I felt pretty good, suddenly. I looked at the kid, standing there defiantly, and at Dr. Michaelis, lying in the bunk behind her; and I knew that I'd had it, I was through, and it felt fine. I knew I wouldn't have killed him if he'd had the secret of the universe locked inside his unkempt head.

I was remembering what Mac had said happened to men whose business allowed them to kill and get away with it. I was remembering Jean dying in my arms, and the hasty knife going into Alan, and the careless way I'd almost put a bullet through young Orcutt's head. Mac had been right, and Klein, the psychiatrist. It was time I got the hell out of the lousy racket...

First, of course, I had to get the hell out of here. I looked at the wrench. It was no beauty, but it was in working order. I pulled off my belt. The rectangular buckle wasn't as big as I'd have liked—Lash Petroni hadn't been the type for wide, cowboy-style belts—but under the leather covering it was of hardened steel with sharp edges, built to come in handy in emergencies.

I snapped the buckle from the belt, and peeled the leather from the buckle. The pencil from the coat pocket of my Petroni suit went through the hole in the buckle for leverage, and I had a reasonable facsimile of a screwdriver. Teddy was watching me with a kind of fearful respect, as if expecting me to produce a pocket model ray gun, or a Dick Tracy wrist radio. Her attitude annoyed me. She wasn't really very bright, or she'd have been asking why I hadn't done all this two hours ago.

“Put up the side of that bunk so our patients don't fall out if things get rugged,” I said. “Then keep an eye to the porthole and an ear to the door, if you can manage. If you see anything out there, let me know. If you hear anybody coming, let me know. Okay?”

“Yes, Matt,” she said, but I noted she didn't get too far from the bunk until I'd made my way past her into the bathroom.

It still looked as interesting as it had when I first cased the joint for possible tools or weapons—that husky lever, I mean, the one that ran the plumbing. It was attached to the machinery in two places: through a pivot at the bottom, and a rod about halfway up that actuated a kind of piston when you pushed and pulled. There were two paint-choked screws to be extracted from two paint-choked nuts. It took me about ten minutes to do the job, and I had a piece of steel about two feet long with a shiny brass handle.

I also had some bleeding knuckles and an incipient case of seasickness: the kid had messed up the place pretty badly, and the schooner was by no means standing still. In fact, it seemed damn close to capsizing as it roared along, but I wasn't taking time out to ask damn fool questions. I figured, if we were really going over, my little nautical expert would come in and give me the word.

When I made my way back into the cabin, she was braced against the door, having a hard time staying there, since it was on the high side. I could see why she'd given up the porthole; it was showing nothing but water and shiny bubbles rushing past. The floor had a slant of about forty-five degrees. Things were getting pretty noisy. You'd have thought we were about to crack the sound barrier with afterburners blazing, instead of just plowing through the water at a measly fourteen knots—well, call it fifteen now.

Teddy looked at the metal bar in my hand and started to ask something. I waved her aside, and took a look at the door.

“What gives?” I shouted, searching for a point of attack. “Maybe sailboats normally travel on their ears, but isn't our skipper overdoing it a bit?”

“I think she's carrying sail deliberately,” Teddy shouted back. “We draw less water well heeled over. We must be getting out of the lee of the island, into the full force of the wind. That means we should be entering the channel soon.
If
she can find it.”

“And if she can't,” I said, “things will start getting very wet in here, very suddenly? Well, I'm going to try prying this door open a bit. You stick the wrench in the crack I make, to hold it open. Here.” I gave her the tool. “If you try to crown me with it, I'll knock you clear across the cabin. That's a promise.”

She gave me a breathless little grin. “All right. It's an armistice. Matt!”

“What?”

“There's somebody outside the door, a guard! I just heard him move. A couple of times before I thought I heard something, but—”

I glanced at her, and put my ear to the door. After a moment, I heard him, too, quite plainly, as he struck a match, presumably lighting a cigarette. I wondered how long he'd been standing out there, and how much he'd heard. Not much, with the noise the ship was making. If he'd heard me working in the bathroom, he'd have come in to investigate.

However, we certainly weren't going to break the door down with him standing there. I thought for a moment, and went quickly back into the head and opened every valve in sight. At first I thought it wasn't going to work, although we were on the low side of the ship. Then water rose in the toilet bowl and started sloshing over with the schooner's motion. It ran across the floor and into the cabin as the
Freya
rolled. I beckoned the kid to me, and told her what to do.

“If it's Nick, he won't fall for it,” she protested. “He knows the ship is sound.”

“It won't be Nick,” I said, hoping I was right. “Big Nick's needed on deck at a time like this. It'll be landlubber Loeffler or his unseen pal. Go on.”

I stationed myself in the cabin, slipping the iron bar behind the edge of the bunk. Teddy glanced at me. I nodded. She stepped forward and hammered on the door with her small fists.

“Help!” she shouted. “Help, we're going to drown! The water's coming in. Oh, help us, please!”

It was pretty corny. For a moment, there was no response. Then somebody fumbled with the bolt. I didn't recognize his voice.

“Get back. Don't try anything funny.”

The door swung open, slamming hard against the dresser. A big man with a pug's thick ears and flattened nose appeared, hanging onto both doorjambs to keep himself from being pitched into the slanting cabin by the force of gravity. He looked at me, safely out of the way, and at the kid.

“There!” she cried, pointing to the water on the floor. “It's coming in, more all the time! We've tried to stop it, but nothing helps!”

He was a landlubber, too. He didn't like the idea of a ship springing a leak, even a little one, with him on board. He took a step forward, still holding the edge of the door with one hand, swinging towards the bathroom. As he turned away from me briefly, I picked up the iron bar and smashed it across his kidneys. He came erect and more than erect. He bent backwards like a bow, grabbing himself back there; then he doubled over with a gasping moan.

I put him down for good with a crack across the neck, and went on my knees to search him for a gun, although if he'd had one, he'd presumably have had it ready when he came in. But I just wasn't passing up any more bets of that kind. But he was clean. He was strictly muscle, the jailer type; and jailers don't carry guns for prisoners to take away from them. Loeffler would supply the brains and artillery for the combination. Well, if he'd had a gun, he'd have been harder to take; we couldn't have it both ways.

I rose. Teddy was staring at the dead man, wide-eyed, her hand to her mouth. I said irritably, “What the hell did you think I was going to do, spend half an hour tearing sheets into strips so I could bind and gag him, like in the movies?”

She drew a deep, ragged breath. “All right. I—I'm all right. What—do we do now?”

“How many ways are there of getting up on deck—”